Pain Hustlers: Director David Yates & Producer Lawrence Grey on their opioid drama

Last Updated on November 2, 2023

Somewhere in the neighbourhood of, 100,000 people die a year of opioid overdoses in the United States alone. This is a sad result of the ongoing Opioid Epidemic which, in part, was driven largely by the increasing prescriptions of opioids for pain management pushed by companies like Purdue Pharma. While the oxycontin story was previously dramatized as Dopesick by Hulu and Painkiller by Netflix, Purdue wasn’t the only company with pharma reps pushing prescriptions. One company called Insys Therapeutics moved a fentanyl spray that was heavily marketed to doctors through thinly veiled bribes, which were first documented in a story by journalist Evan Hughes that was called “The Pain Hustlers.”

This story has been given a fictionalized, star-studded retelling by Netflix, with Harry Potter director David Yates changing pace for this Wolf of Wall Street-style drama. Recently, I had a chance to sit down with Yates and his producer, Lawrence Grey, who discussed the appeal of a movie like this for its stars, Emily Blunt and Chris Evans.

“You know what, I think they loved flexing these muscles,” said Yates. “It gives both of them a license to play. Chris (Evans) loved playing the sort of douchy, sort of low-rent frat rep. It was flexing muscles he doesn’t normally flex. And Emily, you know, often said to Lawrence and me, ‘I’m so glad this isn’t a perfect woman. I’m so glad she’s flawed, I’m so glad she’s damaged, I’m so glad she does bad stuff because it’s interesting for me to play.”

While there have been many dramas about the opioid epidemic, Yates didn’t set out to make a grim movie.

“We wanted to bring as many people as possible to this story. And we felt the best way to do that, and the best way to encourage that was to make the most entertaining version of the film possible with lots of humour and some great stars doing good work. And so our approach right from the get-go was we didn’t want to make an earnest drama.

We wanted to make something that was a bit cheeky, naughty, and playful. And then, within that spirit, you would come across the issues that really matter. So it’s a Trojan horse approach to storytelling. Come and enjoy the wonderful actors. Come and enjoy the spectacle of debauchery. Come and enjoy the jokes.”

To the director, this approach paid off when he saw the film at its TIFF world premiere. “We sat in Toronto with 1 400 people. The film played, man. It played! You know, they, you can feel the connection with the characters, and there’s lots of laughter. But as the film settles in that final third, it gets a bit chillier and a bit colder and a bit more thoughtful. So, and that was always our plan with this story, you know. Bring as many people as you can to it. That was our ambition.”

Key to that ambition was the freedom that a company like Netflix provides; a sentiment echoed recently by director Grant Singer when I interviewed him about his film Reptile. To producer Lawrence Grey, Netflix was an ideal partner. “They were incredible, incredible partners, incredibly supportive. They gave us the resources to make the movie. But they also were great at challenging us at times. Part of this movie is about how much does the character of Liza Drake (Emily Blunt) know about this criminal conspiracy at any moment in time as she goes from naive to discovering things. And that was always stress-tested. And we had these amazing female executives, and you’d get all these different perspectives from Emily’s to our executives. All three of them were women, actually. And so it was just an amazing, amazing collaboration with that studio.”

Pain Hustlers is now streaming on Netflix. You can check out my TIFF review here.