SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched the first season of “Ratched,” streaming now on Netflix. For decades the character of Nurse Mildred Ratched from “One Flew O…
“This story takes place 20 years prior to when we meet Mildred in ‘Cuckoo’s Nest, so [Mildred could] be a very different person with some similarities and some things you recognize, but they’re not fully developed; they haven’t fully settled into her being [and] they have not come to define her.
I was talking about how, given the patriarchal infrastructure of a mental hospital in the 1970s, that it might have been impossible to communicate or indicate or lead with her humanity — because a lot of times that is considered inappropriate in terms of treating somebody with a mental illness. Revealing too much of yourself, lots feel you have to remain as neutral as possible and not give away anything that someone could use against you, I suppose. It’s a way of maintaining control.
Mildred is a compartmentalizer and totally capable of pushing things utterly to the side and has blinders so she only sees the things she needs to see in order to survive. [There was an] opportunity for Mildred to dip her toe in the water of joy, only for her to be brought back to what she has always experienced of being her life, which is something that always moves around hardship and always moves around loss and always moves around betrayal and being forsaken. It’s very familiar to her.
[When] I reach for [Edmund’s] hand and he pulls it towards a part of his body that is just unacceptable to Mildred and she says, “I’ll never do that with you ever again,” at that point I did not know that what had happened between Mildred and Edmund was what was perpetrated against them — which is what they were forced to do. So Mildred’s reaction when she sees Edmund for the first time [at the facility] means is it worked, everything she did.
In terms of research, I think that’s important for me around this subject of research, which I’m sure sounds like an excuse of a lazy actor, but what I never want to feel is more informed than the character. If I learned more from a clinical standpoint about the consequences of that kind of abuse, I worry that it would keep me in a cerebral place instead of an emotional place.
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