'The Good Nurse' on Netflix: The True Story of Charles Cullen Explained

A brand new true crime drama is out on Netflix — and no, I am not speaking about The Watcher or Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.

The Good Nurse is a gripping movie that follows Amy Loughren (Jessica Chastain), a nurse who befriends fellow nurse Charles Cullen (Eddie Redmayne) when he begins on her unit. Little does Loughren know, Cullen is a assassin behind the deaths of a number of sufferers.

The Good Nurse relies on journalist Charles Graeber’s 2013 ebook of the identical title. Let’s run via a number of the main takeaways about the true Cullen and Loughren.

Who’s Charles Cullen?

Charles Cullen pleaded responsible to killing 29 individuals when he labored at hospitals in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, in line with NJ.com. However the true variety of victims could also be a lot greater.

Graeber, the writer of the ebook on which the film relies, advised CBS Information in 2013 that he would “be very shocked, as would just about everybody I’ve spoken to with any data of this case, if it was not within the a whole lot, a number of a whole lot.”

“We’ll by no means know the way many individuals Charlie Cullen in the end killed,” Graeber advised NPR.

How did Cullen kill hospital sufferers?

Cullen killed victims with medicines reminiscent of the center drug digoxin, in line with CBS Information.

Victims ranged in age and well being, with some “able to be discharged when Cullen injected them with medication that will kill them,” in line with the information website.

Jessica Chastain in nurse's scrubs look at something off-screen — Jessica Chastain as Amy Loughren in The Good Nurse.

JoJo Whilden/Netflix

Who’s Amy Loughren?

Loughren labored with Cullen at New Jersey’s Somerset Medical Heart and helped police examine him, in line with NJ.com.

She was a single mom working evening shifts when police advised her he was a serial killer, in line with Glamour. Cullen had been Loughren’s shut buddy and had helped her conceal a coronary heart situation at work. The information shocked her, in line with the journal.

What components of the The Good Nurse are fictionalized?

The film does fictionalize features and alter particulars, in line with the Los Angeles Occasions. Nonetheless, Graeber advised the newspaper he “felt that it was correct in its essence.”

“[The real story here is] about establishments, the banality of evil and people and the alternatives they make,” Graeber stated. “I really feel that this movie nails that.”

Not one of the deaths within the film are primarily based on actual victims, director Tobias Lindholm advised the Occasions. Nonetheless, “the methodology of the murders” stays the identical, he stated.

Why did Cullen do it?

CBS Information correspondent Steve Kroft requested Cullen about his motivation in 2013. “I believed that individuals weren’t struggling anymore,” Cullen stated. “So, in a way, I believed I used to be serving to.”

After Kroft identified that Cullen murdered individuals “who weren’t close to loss of life, and never struggling that a lot,” Cullen stated “there isn’t any justification” and “the one factor I can say is that I felt overwhelmed on the time.”