Background action, background and action.
There were small adjustments made by the production
to account for the news relating to the bankruptcy.
The settlement was exactly as I expected it to be.
I suppose had it gone the other way,
we would have had a bigger problem for our show.
Would've been better for the world…
For our series,
we wanted to take the beginning
and tell the story of how we got to where we are.
Let's dive right in, shall we?
-You take one in the morning. -Welcome.
Pain…
Painkiller is about the opioid epidemic.
It's about greed and drugs and money
and accountability, the lack of accountability.
Money is its own addiction, its own drug.
It's sensory overload.
It smells like money.
You know, nothing shocks me anymore.
This is an ambitious story.
We cover multiple decades, multiple locations.
The beginning of this project, we talked to Barry
and read his books,
and along the way Patrick's article came out.
And we merged forces with Alex Gibney and Patrick.
So the group of us,
then Micah, Noah, myself, and Patrick,
went to Eric.
Eric helped persuade Netflix to take it on board,
and then hired Pete Berg to direct.
Bingo. Success.
Reset!
Peter Berg is unlike anyone I've worked with before.
He's behind the monitor moving with you
and dancing with you, and he's so in it.
I try and encourage people to try different things.
That feels maybe documentary-like,
but I look at it as very creative.
I think that's an infectious thing,
to bring that energy.
It's a good way to leave set as well.
Peter's style in this is to embrace very much
a multi-camera documentary style.
There's a Fellini-esque aspect that he's playing with,
a kind of circus atmosphere.
This story has lots of stranger-than-fiction moments.
And some of that was given a kind of explosive rendering.
It's that insanity that the Painkiller team has captured.
OxyContin gave me my life back.
I think what put me over the edge when it comes to the opioid crisis
is that this is a crime that's hiding in plain sight.
This didn't happen in a vacuum. Wasn't a flash in the pan.
This is a series of decisions
made over time by many people, that led to, you know,
many hundreds of thousands of people dying.
I don't think there's any way to look at it
other than this is a tragedy.
This isn't just about a pill that killed a lot of people.
It's bigger than that.
I think what's great about this series
is it doesn't land responsibility solely on one individual.
From Malibu Barbies, to the doctors themselves,
to the medical system, to the pharmaceutical system,
all the way up to the government.
It's systemic. It's bigger.
It's macro. It's not just one person.
We're interested in not taking the easy way out
in terms of vilifying anyone in this.
He wanted you to see that here's a person
who was in a position, and they made these decisions.
I don't think that the story of Purdue
and the opioid crisis is finished.
There is still so much that's going to be unfolding
over time.
These stories don't get made enough.
So when they do, we gotta do it fucking right
and take a swing.