Actress Emily Blunt takes pleasure in pharma drama Pain Hustlers

TORONTO – Comedy-drama Pain Hustlers stars Emily Blunt as a struggling single mother who becomes a pill-pushing pharmaceutical saleswoman, a lucrative but ethically dubious job.

And although the character is deeply flawed, the British actress – who has taken the lead in films such as A Quiet Place (2016) and its 2020 sequel, as well as The Girl On The Train (2016) – was excited to play a working-class woman striving to make something of herself.

So says director David Yates, the British film-maker who helmed seven movies in the Harry Potter (2001 to 2011) and Fantastic Beasts (2016 to 2022) fantasy franchises.

He was speaking at the Toronto premiere of his new movie, which premieres on Netflix on Friday and co-stars Captain America actor Chris Evans as a sales representative for a pharmaceutical company selling an opioid drug that is falsely promoted as safe and non-addictive.

Pain Hustlers is loosely based on a magazine article and 2022 book of the same name detailing the rise and fall of Insys Therapeutics, a United States company that used misleading advertising and other unscrupulous means to market its fentanyl-based drug, resulting in the 2018 conviction of several executives on criminal charges.

Yates, 60, says Blunt, 40, instantly connected to the story and her character Liza Drake, a high-school dropout who finds herself in dire financial straits.

“What she was so excited about was playing a female character that was complicated and flawed. She said, ‘David, I’m sick of seeing all these female roles where it’s the mother figure or the sister figure, and they have to be so perfect,’” recalls Yates, who also directed the Emmy-winning made-for-television film The Girl In The Cafe (2005).

“And what was exciting for all of us was to explore someone who was flawed and had weaknesses, and someone longing for recognition who wasn’t highly educated.”

Blunt, who appeared in the hit biographical war drama Oppenheimer earlier in 2023, was also an executive producer and actively involved in everything from editing to marketing.

The actress is married to 44-year-old American actor and film-maker John Krasinski. The couple have two daughters aged seven and nine.

Blunt’s American co-star Evans, best known for playing the superhero Captain America in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films, “just loved the idea of playing a sleazy pharma rep”, adds the director. “And he nails it.”

Pain Hustlers also features funnywoman Catherine O’Hara, the Emmy-winning Canadian actress from the hit sitcom Schitt’s Creek (2015 to 2020), as the mother of Blunt’s character.

Yates says: “Catherine, who’s a really gifted comedienne, helped with the type of tone that we were doing, which is to entertain and, at the same time, deliver a serious story.”

The underlying message is about the pitfalls of trying to succeed at all costs, he says.

“It’s an ideology that’s just baked into us and it is part of how our society works, but the part that is often not told are the costs involved.”

One of the most important moments in the film is when Liza realises there is more to life than financial gain.

“She says after her success, ‘I feel just the same, nothing’s really changed’, and there’s a sort of emptiness to the whole thing,” Yates says.

And the scene he found most moving is when Liza stands up in court and owns up to her actions.

“She acknowledges what she’s done and there’s almost a moment of relief. It’s just that notion that we should all be accountable and pay the cost of what we sometimes do,” he says.