For 16 years, an American nurse named Charles Cullen murdered sufferers, seemingly with out motive. When he was caught and arrested in 2003, he confessed to murder detectives Dan Baldwin and Tim Braun that he had killed as many as 40 individuals. Specialists now imagine that quantity is within the lots of, which might make Cullen probably the most prolific serial killer in recorded historical past. He's the topic of Charles Graeber’s exhaustively researched 2013 guide, “The Good Nurse: A True Story of Drugs, Insanity, and Homicide,” which is the idea for a brand new Netflix movie, “The Good Nurse,” written by Krysty Wilson-Cairns and directed by Tobias Lindholm.
Wilson-Cairns pitched her tackle the variation 9 years in the past after being despatched Graeber’s guide by her brokers. At first she wasn’t positive she needed to jot down a screenplay a few serial killer, however Graeber’s writing drew her in, as did the real-life story of Amy Loughren, a fellow nurse who helped to carry Cullen to justice.
“I’d by no means heard about Charles Cullen,” Wilson-Cairns recollects. “I didn’t know he was America’s most prolific serial killer. I didn’t realize it occurred in my lifetime. And I’m a bizarre, twisted one who stays on Google till 4 within the morning studying about horrible individuals, so I might realize it.”
As a local of Scotland, she was additionally unsettled by the American healthcare system, which enabled Cullen to remain employed at varied hospitals for practically twenty years by sweeping his actions below the rug so as to shield enterprise pursuits.
“While you put earnings forward of sufferers, you jeopardize care and also you jeopardize the system by which individuals may be held to account,” Wilson-Cairns provides. “So [my interest] was the trifecta of the truth that I’ve by no means heard of it, the system that I assumed is profoundly damaged and this single mother superhero. What extra are you able to ask for as a author in a narrative you need to inform?”
To show that story right into a function movie required Wilson-Cairns and Lindholm to fictionalize sure features and alter some particulars. However Graeber, who provided Wilson-Cairns together with his analysis, together with the precise tapes of Cullen’s confession, feels that the onscreen model of “The Good Nurse” retains a stable quantity of fact.
“I felt that it was correct in its essence,” Graeber confirms. “I knew it was going to be very totally different for storytelling causes, for authorized causes, for causes of time. There are various unhealthy variations of the serial killer film, which all would oversimplify the true story right here, which is basically not a few serial killer in any respect. It’s actually about establishments, the banality of evil and people and the alternatives they make. I really feel that this movie nails that.”
Streamlining the story
Though Cullen was lively for 16 years, “The Good Nurse” focuses on the time frame proper earlier than his arrest. The movie facilities round Amy (Jessica Chastain), a single mother with a coronary heart situation who works nights as a nurse within the ICU. She is carefully based mostly on the true Amy, who was concerned within the making of the movie. As Amy struggles to maintain her coronary heart situation a secret, she befriends the lately employed Charlie, performed by Eddie Redmayne. He ingratiates himself into her life, together with befriending her two youngsters, earlier than she begins to comprehend he's spiking IV baggage with medication like insulin and digoxin, inflicting sufferers to die all of a sudden. Ultimately, Amy helps two detectives, Danny Baldwin (Nnamdi Asomugha) and Tim Braun (Noah Emmerich), examine Charlie, and he or she is instrumental in his confession.
Hewing extra carefully to the details was a part of the undertaking’s evolution, says Wilson-Cairns.
“Within the earlier drafts, there was much more invented as a result of we had been speaking about it being kind of ‘Silence of the Lambs’ and extra style,” she explains. “As we refined it, we realized that probably the most thrilling parts are the true parts. And in case you can say, ‘This can be a true story, I didn’t actually invent any of this,’ then it turns into much more scary. It’s terrifying as a result of it occurred.”
Key adjustments embrace the timeline, which is condensed to 6 months, and the truth that Charlie spends time in Amy’s residence. Based on Graeber, Charlie knew the place Amy lived however would by no means have met her youngsters. It’s true, although, that Amy had extreme coronary heart points and confronted Charlie in a diner whereas sporting a wire previous to his arrest. Wilson-Cairns had entry to the recording of the wiretap, which in actuality was three hours lengthy.
“As a lot as you’re like, ‘I need to take each single line that’s put on this and each single pause,’ you assume, ‘OK, no, I can’t. I've to work out how can I inform the reality of this three hours in three minutes,’” Wilson-Cairns says. “That’s typically extremely unnerving.”
Defending the victims
It’s unknown precisely how many individuals Cullen killed. Initially, Cullen confessed to a specific variety of victims, however in response to Graeber, that quantity has modified as extra info has come to gentle.
“Hospital medical murders are very troublesome to show,” Graeber notes. “Lots of the hospital data had been destroyed or had been incomplete as a result of we’re going again a decade. And stated he didn’t bear in mind particularly — his reminiscence works a bit of in a different way. He additionally was shaping the narrative he was comfy with. However the specialists that I spoke with, the folks that know this case, some that had a profound psychological perception [on] him and had spoken with him candidly, stated that the quantity that he had confessed to was in all probability decrease by an element of eight, which might put it someplace between 300 and 400 individuals.”
Within the movie, Charlie is depicted murdering a number of individuals, together with a feminine affected person with a younger child and an aged lady with a grieving husband, by injecting medication into IV baggage within the storage room. These onscreen victims, nonetheless, have been fictionalized.
“There may be not a affected person that may be a true story,” Lindholm confirms. “Not one of the deaths we see within the movie are based mostly on actual victims. We took the freedom to alter that as a result of that principally wasn’t the purpose of the movie, that precisely what occurred. We didn't need to retraumatize anyone.”
“I didn’t really feel proper about utilizing individuals’s names and placing phrases of their mouth as a result of they had been killed,” Wilson-Cairns provides. “What we did was we stored the methodology of the murders fully the identical, after which we deviated from the precise victims’ names and their lives.”
Over time, Cullen murdered hospital sufferers in varied methods. The tactic depicted within the movie is correct, though it could not have been what Cullen was doing at that individual time, in response to Graeber.
“He tailored his strategies of homicide over the course of his profession, however that’s actually an excessive amount of to speak in a movie,” Graeber explains. “So polluting IV baggage earlier than they went out on the ground, which is to say dosing them with harmful medicines within the storeroom earlier than they even went out to sufferers, that was one among his preliminary, admitted strategies for overdosing sufferers. Nevertheless it was under no circumstances the one means he did it. And it wasn’t the way in which he was doing it on the finish.”
Re-creating an evening ward
Amy and Charlie work night time shifts in a hospital, typically spending lengthy hours in affected person rooms and behind desks. It was essential for Lindholm that the hospital setting really feel as correct as doable. Initially, the manufacturing hoped to shoot in a working hospital, however the pandemic prevented that.
As an alternative, Lindholm had a duplicate of an ICU in-built an outdated manufacturing unit in Stamford, Conn. He insisted on having sufferers in all the rooms whereas filming, even when the rooms weren’t a part of the scene, so there was an phantasm of fixed exercise. The background actors had been actual medical doctors and nurses introduced on board by a casting company. Lindholm additionally consulted with a nurse, Joseph Fugelo, who helped to coach Redmayne and Chastain and ended up showing within the movie.
“I’ve at all times felt that the most important accountability I've is in direction of the individuals whose lives I painting, and that’s all the way down to the small element,” Lindholm explains. “That’s why we populated the ICU within the movie with actual nurses and medical doctors within the background, in order that we'd know that we'd not make a faux model of their job. And we'd respectfully be exact within the portrayal of the nurses and the medical doctors. In that means, there was a complete little true-life world that Eddie and Jessica might enter and do their jobs and inform this story. It was all the way down to these little particulars.”
A hero’s journey
Cullen just isn't a very well-known serial killer in popular culture, regardless of how prolific he was. However the filmmakers had been much less curious about highlighting him than Loughren, who embodies the title: She risked her profession, and doubtlessly her life, to assist carry Cullen to justice, and he or she did so with kindness and compassion. Graeber came across her throughout his analysis for the guide and ended up spending hours talking to her about Cullen.
“She’s a exceptional particular person,” he recollects. “She ended up being the guts of the story as a result of, not like murder detectives or serial killers, Amy’s one among us. She doesn’t count on homicide each day. It’s not her job description, and it’s not her view of the conventional world. So her decisions are extra relatable to us.”
“She was the entire cause to inform this story,” Lindholm says. “We dwell in a time the place we use hateful means to cease violence. We’re obsessive about darkness. And right here’s a narrative concerning the reverse. A few lady who stopped violence with humanity, with kindness. By reminding a villain of his personal humanity. That struck me as an unique story to inform and a human take. As an alternative of being fascinated with the crime, we turned towards it and we had been fascinated with the humanity that stopped it.”
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