All interviews included in this article were completed prior to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike.
“Hello darkness, my old friend…” Simon & Garfunkel sing as billionaire Richard Sackler (Matthew Broderick) is awakened by an annoying sound in the first three minutes of Painkiller. Despite his billions, it seems Richard still has to deal with the mundane — like an incessantly beeping smoke alarm. The somber tone of “The Sound of Silence” sets the mood for what you can expect from the upcoming limited series, out Aug. 10.
Executive produced by Eric Newman (Narcos) and Pete Berg (Friday Night Lights) who also directs, Painkiller is a fictionalized retelling of the origins and aftermath of the opioid crisis in America, inspired by the book Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America’s Opioid Epidemic by Barry Meier and The New Yorker article “The Family That Built an Empire of Pain” by Patrick Radden Keefe (which was later expanded into Keefe’s 2022 book Empire of Pain). The series, created and written by Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster, follows the perpetrators, victims, and truth-seekers whose lives are forever altered by Purdue Pharma, the company behind OxyContin.
In the clip above, we meet Richard, a senior executive and the nephew of Arthur Sackler, the founder of Purdue. “[His company] has developed kind of a great drug, a miracle for a lot of people giving their lives back, and well, there’s a very bad side to it,” Broderick told Netflix last year. “He feels that he’s helping an enormous amount of people. It’s the only thing we have to get through pain, and I think Richard fully believes that.”
One of the fictionalized characters affected by the current health care crisis is Glen Kryger (Taylor Kitsch), a family man and small business owner who’s prescribed the drug after a workplace injury. “[He’s] just an honest guy that’s making a living and gets in a sh**ty, unfortunate accident, and through painkillers, loses everything,” said Kitsch.
Painkiller also features Uzo Aduba who plays fictional character Edie Flowers, an investigator for the US Attorney’s office attempting to bring a case against Purdue Pharma for their role in the epidemic. “We unpack the complexities of what Purdue did and how the opioid epidemic started to spread throughout the United States and other countries,” director and executive producer Berg told Netflix last year. “That’s kind of dense and complex, and Uzo is sort of our guide on that journey.”
The series also stars West Duchovny, Dina Shihabi, John Rothman, Ana Cruz Kayne, Tyler Ritter, John Ales, Sam Anderson, Carolina Bartczak, Jack Mulhern, and Ron Lea.
“Everyone knows that the opioid crisis is bad, but this is the origin story of the collision between medicine and money that allowed it to happen,” said Newman. “One of the many things that I thought was missing [from the conversation about OxyContin] was the introduction of the drug into mainstream medicine.”
Although the series exposes the Sacklers for profiting off OxyContin users, Newman told Tudum that Painkiller isn’t just about the family. “It’s the political machine,” he said. “It’s the pharmaceutical industrial complex. You can’t understand the epidemic unless you look at all of the participants. The people who did it, the people who let it happen, the people who suffered from it — and the people who blew the whistle on it.”
Painkiller premieres Aug. 10 on Netflix. Watch the first three minutes above.
