Painkiller, a new Netflix limited series, is the latest drama to tackle the opioid epidemic. Of course, 2021's Dopesick and 2022's All the Beauty and the Bloodshed have tackled the rise of Purdue Pharma, the Sackler family, and OxyContin addiction. But Painkiller might be most poignant of them all. Based on Barry Meier's Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America’s Opioid Epidemic, the Netflix series tells the story of six individuals who were greatly affected by the crisis.

While many of those characters are working-class people who fell to addiction after receiving a painkiller prescription, Painkiller also tackles the figures in the justice system who brought a case against Purdue Pharma. One such character is federal investigator Edie Flowers (Uzo Aduba). Following her breakout roles in Orange Is the New Black and HBO's In Treatment reboot, Aduba's character in Painkiller is determined to hold the Sacklers accountable.

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"The world of Edie Flowers, who is a fictitious person—but is a composite of a number of investigators, runs alongside the very real Richard Sackler," Aduba told Netflix. "Having those points of intersection where the two worlds come together was incredibly impactful and powerful." Sackler is played by Matthew Broderick in the series, whom Aduba called "brilliant."

Much like Taylor Kitsch's personal connection to his Painkiller character—a car mechanic who becomes addicted to pain killers after hurting himself on the job—Aduba also had a real-world connection to the epidemic. As she told the Skip Intro podcast, a distant family friend who lost their child later revealed to her that it was opioid-related. "There was no face to it that I knew of until that moment," she recalled, "and suddenly it was a whole other story in my head."

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