ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with The Good Nurse stars Nnamdi Asomugha and Noah Emmerich, who both star in the true crime drama, about its disturbing true story. The film is in select theaters now and will release for streaming through Netflix on October 26.
“Nurse Amy Loughren is shocked when Charlie Cullen, one of her colleagues, is found responsible for the murder of dozens of patients over a period of sixteen years, across two states and nine hospitals, without being charged,” reads the film’s synopsis.
Tyler Treese: Nnamdi, your acting career has been a real joy. You were so incredible in Crown Heights, and this is another film based on a true story. What drives you to get involved with these films that really highlight the triumphs and failures of humanity?
Nnamdi Asomugha: I think the thing for me is the fact that they’re stories about superheroes, but they aren’t necessarily the superheroes we grew up with. But they are everyday superheroes, and from Crown Heights to The Good Nurse, that’s people that are sticking their necks out to try to defend the little people, and I think that’s what draws me to these projects.
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Noah, one of the most disgusting elements of this film is just how kind of complicit these health centers were in covering up what was going on, trying to protect the business first and foremost. What did you find most intriguing about that element? Because that’s an element of healthcare that isn’t really discussed as often.
Noah Emmerich: Yeah, I mean, it’s kind of horrifying, but if you break it down, it adds up, it makes sense. Corporations are profit machines, and when you put a profit machine in charge of healthcare, you get some funny results. We don’t tend to think of healthcare as something that’s a profit-driven business, but like every other business in America, it is. It’s not a nonprofit business, it’s a for-profit business. We’re the only western nation in the world that doesn’t have healthcare as a human right, and this is part of the problem. I mean, it doesn’t get worse than what happened in this story. So I definitely felt it was an important thing to illuminate, to start talking about, to have part of our conversation. So I’m grateful to be part of this story and hopefully, it motivates some conversations and maybe some change.
Nnamdi, you have some really tense exchanges in the film. Can you speak to bringing that intensity because it really underlines the desire for your character to bring justice?
Yeah, I think the goal, well, anytime that you’re playing a role of a detective, there’s strategy in how you speak to someone and the things that you’re trying to pull from them. You gotta go in and be calm and be smooth and collected the entire time, and hopefully, they’ll cooperate. So that was the goal for most of the film. But then there’s that moment where Danny Baldwin, my character, blows up at the head of the hospital because it had just reached that point, and in talking with the real guy and understanding what got him to that place, it was really that he had been calm for so long. He had taken people shutting doors in his face and his partner Tim, they were hitting roadblocks at every turn. I think that was that moment where, he was so frustrated, that he had to let loose and that intensity showed. But that wasn’t…that’s not who he was the entire time. His thing was about being collected and trying to get information that way, but when it doesn’t work, you have to change your tactic.
