Actor stars in ‘The Good Nurse,’ a chilling true-crime thriller for Netflix about a serial killer and the nurse who helped him get justice
Actor stars in ‘The Good Nurse,’ a chilling true-crime thriller for Netflix about a serial killer and the nurse who helped him get justice
The careers of Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne were, perhaps, always on a collision course. His similar red-haired, fair-skinned appearance has long been compared. When they performed together at the 2017 Golden Globes, host Jimmy Fallon introduced them to “Chastain and the Redmayne” by rapping to the beat of Cypress Hill’s “Insane in the Membrane”.
Since meeting at a children’s film festival in Italy years ago, they have also been friends. Even if they are on the verge of being an occasional rival.
“I think we needed ‘The Danish Girl,’ because everyone always talks about how we look alike,” Chastain says. “I took a picture of him in character in costume and I emailed Eddie and I said, ‘Stop taking my roles, (disrespectful).'”
“The Good Nurse,” which premiered over the weekend at the Toronto International Film Festival, brings Chastain and Redmayne together on screen for the first time. It is a clever, chilling true-life drama that revolves around the case of Charles Cullen, a nurse in East Coast hospitals who murdered at least 29 patients. The film is directed by Tobias Lindholm and from Charles Graber’s 2013 book, “The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness and Murder” by screenwriter Christy Wilson-Cairns (“1917,” “Last Night in Soho”) is customized.
Chastain plays Amy Loughren, a New Jersey single mother nurse who befriends Cullen (Redmayne) after being hired. In an interview together at a hotel in Toronto prior to the film’s premiere, their easily visible chemistry in the film was even more impressive in person.
Jessica Chastain | photo credit: Ivan Agostini
“We play friends,” Chastain says, placing more emphasis on “playing.” “That was tough.”
“It was a pleasure,” Redmayne smiles, causing Chastain to laugh and sigh: “He can’t even pretend.”
The film, which will release in theaters on Netflix October 19 and stream on October 26, not only deals with a stealthy serial killer, but the for-profit health care system that allowed him to go undetected for so long. Nnamdi Asomugha and Noah Emmerich co-star as police detectives.
“For me, the script was a complicated story, a mix of this very close friendship, a tale of heroism by Jessica’s character Amy,” Redmayne says. “But in some ways, it was a question of a system, and how that system works or fails.”
“The Good Nurse” was initially set several years earlier, but Lindholm, the Danish author of several Thomas Winterberg films including the Oscar-winning “The Other Round” and “The Hunt”, went on to create a massive Danish miniseries, “The Investigation”. are committed to. ,” about the death of 30-year-old Swedish journalist Kim Wall. The actors discussed their options and elected to wait for Lindholm.
“We had a lot of conversations even before we started. So we knew what we wanted with the film, and we were looking forward to it,” Lindholm says. “We came in with an extremely caring and loving energy. We would all three cores. I thought we Together all three will make this film.”
“They’re a dream, two of them,” he continued. “They look alike. They have the same humour. They have the same energy. And yet they are very different.”
For Chastain, 45, and Redmayne, 40, making “The Good Nurse” came with some nervousness. He said that working with friends can mean seeing a different side of someone. Redmayne’s character, too, is a deeply damaged man who wears a gentle and warm mask. Redmayne’s little hangdog physicality in “The Good Nurse” is unlike anything he’s ever done.
This image released by Netflix shows Eddie Redmayne and Jessica Chastain in a scene from ‘The Good Nurse’. photo credit: JOJO WHILDEN
“I respect that they don’t need to torture others around them to believe their performances,” says Chastain, who says she respects any actor’s process. “I would talk to Eddie easily like this, and then ‘We have to roll,’ and here comes Charlie. It wasn’t like we had to work with Charlie. I was like, ‘Oh. I still like you’ I do, thank God!'”
“The Good Nurse” is Chastain’s first since she won Best Actress at the Academy Awards earlier this year for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye.” Publicity has highlighted that the film has two major Oscar winners; Redmayne won Best Actor for his Stephen Hawking in 2014’s “The Theory of Everything.”
“I have to say when I saw the trailer for my movie and it was both of us, I was like, ‘Yeah,'” Chastain says.
“It’s almost the best feeling,” Redmayne replies. “Because you don’t really believe it when it happens.”
Chastain previously had a superstition about holding an Oscar, and once refused to touch Redmayne’s award.
“But now,” she says with a laugh, “I’ll hold your Oscar and you can hold mine.”