Netflix 'Painkiller': Charming Matthew Broderick transforms into the villain in opioid crisis story

While Matthew Broderick may be one of the most lovable stars in Hollywood, in the new Netflix series Painkiller, he steps into the manipulative and evil mind of Richard Sackler, former president and co-chairman of Purdue Pharma, manufacturer of OxyContin.

The series is largely based on the book "Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America's Opioid Epidemic" by Barry Meier, who is also a consulting producer on the series, and the New Yorker Magazine article titled "The Family That Built the Empire of Pain" by Patrick Radden Keefe.

Each episode begins with a message directly to the audience from people who have lost loved ones to OxyContin-related deaths, as a way to really stress that while some of the circumstances of the series are fictionalized, it's all based on the very true and devastating reality of the addictive drug for so many people, specifically in the U.S. in this case.

'The creation of the modern pharmaceutical marketing machine'

Coming after the release of the Hulu series Dopesick, and documentaries like Alex Gibney's The Crime of the Century (Gibney is an executive producer on this Netflix series as well) and All the Beauty and the Bloodshed from Laura Poitras, the information being presented in Painkiller isn't necessarily new, but the differences are in how the Netflix series tells this mortifying story.

Firstly, the sort of moral compass for the show, the person who leads us through this journey, is Uzo Aduba's character Edie Flowers, a lawyer who worked for the U.S. Attorney's office investigating OxyContin. Flowers is very similar to Rosario Dawson's character in Dopesick, but what gives Flowers energy and interest is that Aduba's performance is incredibly moving. Her emotion feels so earnest and oftentimes heartbreaking, it's a captivating portrayal of this character.

A core aspect of the storytelling that's specific to Painkiller is how the series regularly has the ghost of Richard's uncle, Arthur Sackler Sr. (Clark Gregg), over his shoulder. Arthur is frequently coaching Richard on how to succeed with marketing OxyContin, getting it to physicians and to their patients. It's also a way the series stresses the importance of the Sackler family's legacy.

"A lot of [Barry Meier's] original reporting had to do with the creation of the modern pharmaceutical marketing machine, without which this epidemic could not have happened," executive producer Eric Newman said to Yahoo Canada. "Feeling the influence of a guy who had nothing to do with OxyContin, because it didn't exist at the time of his death, but somebody who began the very, very dangerous path that led to this."

"Think about any technology or any new process, there always, it seems, where business, where money is concerned, there's a terrifying application that in the wrong hands becomes the industrialization of murder, potentially. So for us, ... unable to get into the head of Richard Sackler, we found this great device."

Newman stressed that throughout the series, Richard is trying to "live up to the brilliance of his uncle," in an effort to maintain the "lustre" of the Sackler name.

"He's using the inherited skills of a marketer in a place where marketing should be secondary to the good of the patient," Newman said. "It seemed like a really powerful interplay, these two characters, in sort of a Hamlet and Hamlet's father-type way."

Painkiller also spends a significant amount of time showing how the Sackler marketing strategy is executed by the Purdue Pharma salesforce. We follow West Duchovny's character Shannon Schaeffer from her first day on the job, to becoming one of Purdue's star sales employees, and the ethical questions that come with that.

The series also gives us insight into the personal story of someone's path to an OxyContin addiction. In this case, that comes from Fright Night Lights alum Taylor Kitsch's character, father and mechanic Glen Kryger. He's first prescribed the drug after suffering a serious back injury after a painful fall.

Pharmaceutical companies 'will find a workaround'

As we now know, Purdue Pharma declared bankruptcy in 2020 and reached a US$6 billion settlement in court, which ensured that the Sackler family has immunity from any future opioid lawsuits. What that means is that, essentially, the Sacklers are never personally being held responsible for their part in the opioid crisis, but the Sackler name has certainly been tarnished. That includes the name being removed from prestigious museums and galleries around the world.

In a new development on Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court halted the bankruptcy proceedings from moving forward. The court agreed to review the case following arguments that the Sacklers should not have these legal protections.

But as Meier has stressed, the power of the "ideology" was a driving force in what made medical professionals and others continue to push OxyContin out into the world, even when severe risks had been documented.

Now having this pattern of regulators, lawmakers and other stakeholders looking the other way, in a similar fashion to what happened with OxyContin, how can we prevent a tragedy like the opioid epidemic? For Meier, it comes down to the ability of pharmaceutical companies and other corporations to "morph."

"You can throw up a roadblock, you can tell them, 'you can't do this,' and they will find a workaround," he told Yahoo Canada. "They'll find a different way to pay off doctors, they'll find a different way to corrupt people."

"Until the medical profession basically throws off these shackles, these chains that people like Arthur Sackler put onto it 50, 60 years ago. Until doctors say to themselves, 'I make a pretty good living, I don't need another $20,000 from a drug company. I don't need crummy dinners from a drug company. My role is devotion to patients, doing my job, doing what's best for them.' They are the ones that need to change. They are the ones who need to prevent this from ever happening."