Nearly 60 years after Ken Kesey created Mildred Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the heartless asylum nurse will get her origin story in Ratched, out September 18th on Netflix.
Louise Fletcher famously portrayed the nurse in the 1975 film and now Sarah Paulson stars as a younger version who confidently says, “Looking good today, Mildred,” to herself in the mirror. She explains she was taken away from her parents at a young age and seeks employment at a psychiatric hospital in Northern California in 1947.
“The doctors here, they want to give you hope,” Mildred says over a menacing score, as patients undergo lobotomies and other drastic and unsettling experiments, “that one day you can leave here, that you deserve someone to show you mercy. How different I would be if someone had.”
Ratched was created by Evan Romansky. Paulson is joined by Cynthia Nixon as Gwendolyn Briggs, Judy Davis as Nurse Betsy Bucket, Sharon Stone as Lenore Osgood and Jon Jon Briones as Dr. Richard Hanover. The cast also includes Finn Wittrock, Charlie Carver, Alice Englert, Amanda Plummer, Sophie Okonedo, Corey Stoll, Brandon Flynn and others.
The series was executive produced by Ryan Murphy — known for American Horror Story and Glee — as well as Ian Brennan, Paulson, Alexis Martin Woodall, Aleen Keshishian, Jacob Epstein, Jennifer Salt, Margaret Riley, Michael Douglas, Robert Mitas, Tim Minear and more.
From Rolling Stone US
