The Good Nurse Amy Loughren says she missed her friendship with serial killer Charles Cullen

She said watching Eddie Redmayne play Cullen was ‘triggering’

2 years ago

Netflix’s latest true crime drama The Good Nurse follows the story of Amy Loughren and how she worked with the police to bring serial killer Charles Cullen to justice. Amy and Charles both worked in the Intensive Care Unit at Somerset Hospital in New Jersey, in 2003. He killed up to 40 patients while working at the hospital and it was the friendship between Charles Cullen and Amy Loughren that helped police arrest the serial killer.

Amy Loughren has spoken to Sky News about what it was like watching Eddie Redmayne play her former friend whom she spent a lot of time with while working at the hospital. As well as how she felt helping the police bring Cullen to justice after they had discovered the truth behind the mysterious patient deaths.

While working with the police, Amy agreed to wear a wire and meet Charles to get a confession from him. Loughren confronted Cullen about the deaths and she said: “He sat straight up. The colour of his eyes changed. He put a smirk on his face and said, ‘I’m going to go down fighting’.” Amy said she was “pretty terrified every day” while working with the police. She said: “The things that they don’t show in the film was that I was actually much more sick – and I was truly terrified of leaving my two girls behind.”

Jessica Chastain in The Good Nurse as Amy Loughren who had a friendship with Charles Cullen

via Netflix

Amy recalled it being “triggering” to watch the movie because Eddie Redmayne “truly embodied” who Charles Cullen was. She said: “The way that he moves, the way that he speaks, the interactions that we have are so real. That part of it was extremely triggering.”

The now retired nurse also revealed to Sky that she did miss Charles Cullen “for a while”. Amy said that although Charles was a monster, there was a part of her that missed the friendship they both had. “Allowing myself to understand that I missed him for a while – and my guilt about actually missing my friendship, because he is a monster. But I didn’t know the murderer. I only met the murderer a couple of times and he played this part of my friend. I missed that friendship, so it was very triggering,” she said.

Real life Amy Loughren now via Instagram @amythegoodnurse

When Amy was first approached about the film, she found it “laughable”. Darren Aronofsky was the first person who decided to make it into a movie and he told Amy that he found the most “compelling” part of Charles Graeber’s The Good Nurse book to be the friendship between Charles and Amy.

Amy said: “Something that I had actually been embarrassed about and felt so much guilt about was all of a sudden going to be up on a big screen. I didn’t really know how to feel. I didn’t want anyone to know who I was 20 years ago. I didn’t want anyone judging me from the 20 years ago that I was. It was scary. I didn’t want my name on it at first. Then I realised it’s going to happen with or without me – I might as well give myself a voice.”

The Good Nurse is available on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news, drops, quizzes and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook.