Liza Drake: Is Emily Blunt’s character in Pain Hustlers real?

Everyone has been loving Emily Blunt’s new film Pain Hustlers since it dropped on Netflix last weekend. Sort of like Wolf of Wall Street but with pharmaceuticals, the film follows single mother Liza Drake and and Zanna Pharmaceuticals rep Pete Brenner as they take over the US with sales of a fentanyl spray.

But everyone has one big question after watching Pain Hustlers: Was Liza Drake actually a real person? And if she was, what happened to her after she served jail time? So, here’s everything you need to know about the character, played by Emily Blunt:

Right, so was Liza Drake from Pain Hustlers a real person?

Credit: Netflix

At the start of Pain Hustlers, there’s a title card which says the story is “inspired by real events”. And John Kapoor, the real-life founder and CEO of Insys did end up in jail. But it all played out quite differently to in the movie. Because, Pain Hustlers is actually a completely fictional story, with some grounding in real-life events. Meaning, Liza Drake is not a real person.

Pain Hustlers is actually based on a New York Times Magazine article, titled The Pain Hustlers, by journalist Evan Hughes, who later wrote a book called The Hard Sell. He told the story of Insys founder John Kapoor and film writers took the wheel from there.

Some characters in the film are loosely based on real life people: Andy Garcia’s Zanna CEO Jack Neel is a version of John Kapoor, Chris Evans’ Pete Brenner has similarities to Insys employee Alec Burlakoff. But Liza Drake was an amalgamation of “young people who were often in over their head and they were hungry for success and a lot of that is embodied in her. Even if the details come from hither and yon, they’re real,” Evan Hughes told Time.

“Liza was our invention, a single mum with a daughter struggling with health issues, a dreamer, undervalued but incredibly capable.”

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

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Featured image credit via Netflix