Ratched: First Look at Sarah Paulson in Netflix’s ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ Prequel
Paulson said that executive producer Ryan Murphy — with whom she’s worked on AHS and American Crime Story at FX — offered the role by saying, “Lady, do you want to have some like Walter White shit happen?” She also told a crowd at the 2019 New Yorker Festival that the show is “complicated and dark and not what I expected, and totally terrifying. It’s more psychological than murder-scary where somebody jumps out from behind you. It’s sort of a meditation on someone’s psychological strengths or weaknesses.”
Set in 1947, Ratched follows Mildred as she seeks work at a psychiatric hospital in Northern California “where new and unsettling experiments have begun on the human mind,” per the show’s official logline. “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.”
Louise Fletcher won the 1975 Best Actress Oscar for playing the mature Nurse Ratched in Milos Forman’s 1975 Best Picture Oscar, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
The cast also includes Cynthia Nixon, Judy Davis, Sharon Stone, Jon Jon Briones, Finn Wittrock, Charlie Carver, Alice Englert, Amanda Plummer, Corey Stoll, Sophie Okenedo and Vincent D’Onofrio.
Ratched comes from Fox 21 TV Studios, as it was ordered before Murphy moved his overall deal from 20th Century Fox to Netflix. Evan Romansky created the series.
The executive producers are Murphy, Ian Brennan, Paulson, Alexis Martin Woodall, Aleen Keshishian, Jacob Epstein, Jennifer Salt, Margaret Riley, Michael Douglas (who produced the 1975 film), Robert Mitas and Tim Minear