The Good Nurse director hails Jessica Chastain's character as a 'female superhero'

Jessica Chastain has played the CIA agent who found Osama bin Laden. She's portrayed Tammy Faye Bakker. But she's never quite done a superhero (and no, Dark Phoenix's evil Vuk doesn't count).

Then again, Tobias Lindholm, the director of Chastain's latest film, The Good Nurse, thinks that day may finally be at hand, as audiences watch his Oscar-winning star embody an exhausted ICU healthcare worker who somehow thwarts a serial killer — her coworker and friend.

"The biggest reason to make this was that it's a fascinating story about this serial killer and the system that didn't stop him," Lindholm tells EW at the Toronto International Film Festival, "but at the core of that, there's a story about a female superhero: a naturalistic, lonely, struggling mom who went in and offered something to this world that we miss these days, which is goodness and charity and friendship. That she went in and battled evilness with friendship and love was the biggest reason to do this and is the reason that we sit there glued to the screen still."

Chastain's real-life character is nurse Amy Loughren, who, in 2003, tipped authorities that her colleague, Charles Cullen (Eddie Redmayne), had been inducing medical deaths. Before Cullen was finally apprehended at a restaurant, Loughren risked her own safety by wearing a wire and recording their conversations. It's now believed that Cullen may have killed hundreds more patients over his 16-year career, making him the most prolific serial killer in history.

At TIFF in EW's video suite, director Lindholm was joined by leads Chastain and Redmayne, as well as Nnamdi Asomugha, who plays Detective Danny Baldwin in the film. Asomugha says The Good Nurse is replete with unsung heroes, such as his character.

"I think Amy is a superhero, but I think also Danny and Tim [Braun, another detective, played by Noah Emmerich] were superheroes in their own respect," Asomugha says. "A lot of doors closed on them, [and] with the help of Amy they were able to open them," he said. "It was a heroic thing that they did, so I was honored to be able to play him."

The film may be full of heroes, but getting them there was its own epic journey. In order to play believable healthcare workers, Chastain and Redmayne both went to nursing school to practice with real medical professionals.

True to the film's title, Chastain was apparently a natural, but Redmayne was anything but. "She is an actual good nurse," Redmayne says. "She was so f—ing good at that."

But the two had to learn to put IV needles into dummies, much to the chagrin of Redmayne's trainer. "[Chastain] was really good, and our nurse in charge kept saying, 'Redmayne, I don't want to be in any hospitals that you are anywhere near!'"

The Good Nurse hits Netflix on Oct. 26. Watch the full interview with the director and cast in the video above.

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