ABOVE: Sarah Paulson as Nurse Ratched in the new Netflix series, “Ratched.” (Photo courtesy Netflix)
The legendary villain of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and one of pop culture’s most hated individuals, Nurse Ratched is making her way to Netflix thanks to LGBTQ icons Ryan Murphy and Sarah Paulson.
“Ratched” will take place a decade before the events of the classic Milo Forman film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” — which starred Jack Nicholson, Danny Devito and Louise Fletcher, as the bone-chilling Nurse Ratched — and, according to Murphy, will be “an imagining of how this monster was created.”
UPDATE: Netflix has released the first trailer to “Ratched.” You can watch it below.
“I feel like Nurse Ratched is sort of a shorthand for barbarism. She became almost like a catchphrase for any sort of institutional abuse of power,” Murphy said in an interview with Vanity Fair. “What was interesting was trying to create an emotional character from a reputation that’s very cold … trying to figure out every little detail about her childhood, her relationships, her sexuality. Because when people think of Ratched, they think of her as shutoff and cruel and uncaring.”
Paulson, who has collaborated with Murphy on several of his hit shows including “American Horror Story” and “American Crime Story,” will also be a producer on this series.
Talking to Vanity Fair, Paulson said while she hated Nurse Ratched when she saw her in the original film, she found a sympathy for the character in this new series.
“I identified very deeply with her loneliness. I think ultimately at the end of the day, that is sort of what drives Mildred,” Paulson said. “A pursuit of survival and of finding some sense of home. Even though the methods that she chooses to achieve that internal security are somewhat questionable, I would argue that she’s doing them with a potentially selfish need, but a survival need nevertheless. Sort of an animal need that blinds her to the inappropriateness of some her actions.”
The original 1975 film, often considered by critics to be one of the greatest films ever made, won five Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor for Nicholson and Best Actress for Fletcher. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is one of only three films to win the Big Five at the Oscars. The others are 1934’s “It Happened One Night” and 1991’s “Silence of the Lambs.”
“Ratched,” created and written by Evan Romansky, will also stars Cynthia Nixon, Judy Davis, Sharon Stone, Jon Jon Briones, Finn Wittrock, Charlie Carver, Alice Englert, Amanda Plummer, Corey Stoll, Sophie Okonedo and Vincent D’Onofrio, and will premiere Sept. 18 on Netflix.
