Netflix’s upcoming limited series “Painkiller,” starring Uzo Aduba and Matthew Broderick, lifts the veil on America’s opioid crisis. Per an official synopsis, the six-part fictional series will spotlight “stories of the perpetrators, victims, and truth-seekers whose lives are forever altered by the invention of OxyContin.”
Painkiller investigates the role of one family in making OxyContin “the No. 1 opioid in the country.” Matthew Broderick, starring as Richard Sackler, says in the series’ official trailer: “All of human behavior is essentially comprised of two things: run from pain, run toward pleasure; pain, pleasure. If we place ourselves right there between pain and pleasure, we will never have to worry about money again.”
In the series, an investor from the U.S. attorneys office (played by Aduba) is determined to take the Sackler dynasty’s Purdue Pharma down, and recruits a batch of sales workers who they claim will convince doctors to “take pain seriously.” Says Aduba: “You lie, you hurt people, you go down. They are doing the exact same thing as crack dealers but they are getting rewarded it.”
Painkiller is based on the book of the same name by Barry Meier, as well as Patrick Radden Keefe’s article in The New Yorker titled “The Family That Built the Empire of Pain.” In addition to Aduba and Broderick, Painkiller stars Taylor Kitsch, Dina Shihabi, John Rothman and West Duchovny. Guest stars for the series include Clark Gregg, Jack Mulhern, Sam Anderson, Ana Cruz Kayne, Brian Markinson, Noah Harpster, John Ales, Johnny Sneed and Tyler Ritter.
Painkiller premieres Thursday, Aug. 10 on Netflix. Take a look at the trailer – here.
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