Sarah Paulson resurrects Cuckoo’s Nest nurse in Netflix’s Ratched
By Lacy Baugher
Sarah Paulson resurrects one of cinema’s most iconic characters for Ryan Murphy’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest prequel series, Ratched.
Netflix released the first trailer for Ratched, the latest series in its production deal with American Horror Story‘s Ryan Murphy. And while this series may have distinct American Horror Story: Asylum vibes, it’s based on a character who is already both famous and terrifyingly sinister in her own right.
Abusive asylum attendant Mildred Ratched was introduced in Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and featured prominently in the 1975 Academy Award-winning film adaptation of the same name. In the movie, Jack Nicholson played Randle Patrick McMurphy, a criminal patient at an Oregon mental institution whose rebellious attitude puts him into constant conflict with the monstrous, Nurse Ratched, whose brutal treatments and constant psychological gaslighting is now the stuff of cinematic legend.
American Horror Story regular Sarah Paulson will portray the infamous nurse, a role that won Louise Fletcher a Best Lead Actress Oscar.
The series aims to explore how this seemingly unassuming woman became the famous abuser of patients featured in the original film. And, per Netflix’s synopsis, the show certainly hints at some already-existing darkness within the character.
"In 1947, Mildred (Sarah Paulson) arrives in Northern California to seek employment at a leading psychiatric hospital where new and unsettling experiments have begun on the human mind. On a clandestine mission, Mildred presents herself as the perfect image of what a dedicated nurse should be, but the wheels are always turning and as she begins to infiltrate the mental health care system and those within it, Mildred’s stylish exterior belies a growing darkness that has long been smoldering within, revealing that true monsters are made, not born."
Watch the trailer for yourselves below.
The series boasts a positively all-star cast that includes Cynthia Nixon, Judy Davis, Sharon Stone, Amanda Plummer, Corey Stoll, and Vincent D’Onofrio alongside Murphy regular Finn Wittrock.
Ratched will premiere all eight episodes on September 18 on Netflix.
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