Painkiller official trailer Netflix
WARNING: This article contains spoilers from Painkiller.
Painkiller came out on Netflix in full last week and subscribers are going through every detail with a fine tooth comb so is Edie Flowers a person in real life?
The new Netflix drama explores the opioid crisis and how the president of a pharmaceutical company that produced Oxycontin, continued to get sales people to promote the drug, despite knowing of its addictive qualities.
It also goes into how people’s lives were changed by the medication and lawyer Edie Flowers’ (played by Uzo Aduba) attempt to try and figure out how it all went wrong.
Fans will best reognise actress Aduba for her role as Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren in Netflix’s Orange is the New Black.
With the award-winning actress behind the stand-out character, viewers are interested to know all there is about who she is playing.
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Is Painkiller character Edie Flowers a real person?
Painkiller is based on a true story with the drama’s plot coming from the 2003 book Pain Killer by Barry Meier and the 2017 New Yorker article The Family That Built the Empire of Pain.
However, Edie herself is actually an amalgamation of a few different people who were there at the time of the crisis, according to Aduba.
Speaking to Netflix’s Tudum, she clarified: “The world of Edie Flowers, who is a fictitious person—but is a composite of a number of investigators—runs alongside the very real [pharmaceutical tycoon] Richard Sackler.
“Having those points of intersection where the two worlds come together was incredibly impactful and powerful.”
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In the drama, Edie and her team are able to link the rise in OxyContin prescriptions with an increase in crime, homelessness and death from drug overdoses.
She also discovered that the FDA approval that the company had was actually based on fake claims.
It is then one of Sackler’s secretaries who divulges that he and several others knew just Oxycontin was but still decided to sell the product.
As a result, Edie is able to present a case and use her evidence against the company.
Painkiller also shows that Edie has a personal connection to Oxycontin, explaining why she is so determined to fight against it.
When her boss warns her not to take on the pharmaceutical giant, she tells him: “They are doing the exact same thing as every crack dealer on every corner in America, except they’re getting rewarded for it, getting rich off of it, and my brother is in a prison cell right now, rotting.
“What is the difference? They know they are killing people. They know it.”
Painkiller is available to watch on Netflix.
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