‘Ratched’ – First Images From Netflix’s Sarah Paulson & Ryan Murphy’s Cuckoo’s Nest Prequel Series

They spent so much energy trying to figure out if they could, they never took the time to figure out if they should. That’s the feeling we get when we first heard that Ryan Murphy was making a prequel series to  Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest for Netflix. As you can guess from the title, the new series stars Sarah Paulson as Nurse Ratched, one of the more irredeemable characters in pop culture.

In the new series, we’ll get to follow Mildred Ratched as she moves to northern California and takes up employment at a mental facility. We will then get to watch her slowly descend into the heartless creature we saw in the book and on film. Joining Paulson in the new show is a star-studded cast that includes Cynthia Nixon, Sharon Stone, Charlie Carver, Judy Davis, Liz Femi, Sophie Okonedo, Finn Wittrock, Jon Briones,  Alice Englert, Vincent D’Onofrio, Corey Stoll, and Amanda Plummer.

Here’s the show’s official synopsis.

” In 1947, Mildred arrives in Northern California to seek employment at a leading psychiatric hospital where new and unsettling experiments have begun on the human mind. On a clandestine mission, Mildred presents herself as the perfect image of what a dedicated nurse should be, but the wheels are always turning and as she begins to infiltrate the mental health care system and those within it, Mildred’s stylish exterior belies a growing darkness that has long been smoldering within, revealing that true monsters are made, not born.”