Ratched, Netflix's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Prequel, Arrives In September

August 2024 · 2 minute read

Ratched, a prequel to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, starring Sarah Paulson as Nurse Mildred Ratched, the character played by Louise Fletcher in the 1975 film, will premiere on September 18 on Netflix.

Produced by American Horror Story’s Ryan Murphy, the series, which was announced three years after Netflix placed a two-season order, also stars Cynthia Nixon, Judy Davis and Sharon Stone. The drama, set in 1947, follows Nurse Ratched as she interviews at a psychiatric hospital in Northern California "where new and unsettling experiments have begun on the human mind."

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In the 1975 film, directed by Miloš Forman and based on the 1962 novel by Ken Kesey, Randle Patrick McMurphy, played by Jack Nicholson battles Nurse Ratched, a tyrannical mental ward supervisor. The series, which takes place years before the events in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, examines Ratched’s progression from nurse to monster as she works her way through the mental health care system.

As an origin story, Ratched delves into the nurse’s childhood, relationships and sexuality. Murphy’s premise was that abusers are often people who have endured abuse. Joining the title character are Dr. Hanover, a pioneering doctor who subjects his patients to controversial treatments; mass murderer Edmund Tolleson; hospital staff members Dolly and Huck; eccentric heiress Lenore Osgood; private investigator Charles Wainwright; motel manager Louise; and politician Governor George Wilburn and his campaign manager Gwendolyn Briggs.

The series seems to share many elements with American Horror Story, which explored Briarcliff Manor, a hospital the criminally insane, in American Horror Story: Asylum. The second entry in the anthology series, which debuted in 2012, also starred Paulson as Lana Winters, an ambitious journalist who works her way into the hospital to interview a killer. Winters is eventually committed to the asylum herself for her homosexuality.

The cast of Ratched also includes Jon Jon Briones, Finn Wittrock, Charlie Carver, Alice Englert, Amanda Plummer, Corey Stoll, Sophie Okenedo, and Vincent D'Onofrio. The series, based on a spec script by Evan Romansky, includes among its executive producers Michael Douglas, who produced the 1975 film.

Source: Hollywood Reporter

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