#Hulu’s Dopesick Trailer Has Michael Keaton Taking on the Opioid Crisis in America

Hulu hasreleased its first trailer for Dopesick, an eight episode mini-series based on the non-fiction book, ‘Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors and the Drug Company that Addicted America’ by Beth Macy. It shows Dr. Samuel Finnix (Michael Keaton), an old-school doctor that later finds himself embroiled in Big Pharma’s deadly secret, getting shabbily schmoozed with a bucket of KFC by a pharmaceutical rep declaring, “Less than one percent of people get addicted to OxyContin.” Samuel’s response, “That’s not possible.”

The trailer shows how hard the reps were pushed to get the drug to market and are instructed to do “whatever it takes” to earn the “trust” of medical professionals so they will begin prescribing the drug. While hesitant at first to prescribe the drug, Finnix relents, prescribing his patient Betsy Mallum, played by Kaitlyn Dever (Booksmart, Justified), the “miracle drug” and instructs her to only take two per day. Dr. Finnix starts to see the negative aspects of OxyContin. “I think maybe that medicine might be just a tad more addictive than you said,” Samuel says to Billy (Will Poulter). The rep replies, “That’s not what we’re hearing.”

During the Television Critics Association’s Summer Press Tour, Rosario Dawson notes she’s had “family members and people in the community who I’ve seen suffer and whose lives have generationally been impacted now from opioid addiction.” She spoke of, “the ease with which it was just brought into their lives and how destructive it was.” Later, she added, “To have the ability to tell these real people’s tales, I think is going to bring humanity to a situation that unfortunately has seen a lot of inhumanity,” of the series.

Michael Keaton agreed, “I think what Rosario said, the way she expressed it was perfect because that maybe was a shocker to me, the ease with which it became an epidemic, kind of knocked me out, you know, it seems almost too simple, that this happened this way. I’m reading and thinking, ‘Well, are we really just too on the head?’ and then you have to read Beth Macy’s book and start to do any kind of research than you realize this is not exaggerated in the slightest, but that’s the expression, that’s the thing for me, the ease with which all this happened was sickening.”

Hulu’s limited series Dopesick, starring Golden Globe-winner Michael Keaton, is a compelling look at the epicenter of America’s struggle with opioid addiction. From executive producers Danny Strong (Empire) and Warren Littlefield (The Handmaid’s Tale), Dopesick is an unsparing yet deeply human portrait of families impacted by the opioid crisis and their intersecting stories. From a distressed Virginia mining community to the hallways of the DEA, this limited series tells a captivating story that taps into a powerful and timely cultural conversation. The series tackles the opioid’s shattering effects on every community and Purdue Pharma. Rosario Dawson, Kaitlyn Dever, Will Poulter, Peter Sarsgaard, Michael Stuhlbarg, John Hoogenakker are also in the cast, as well as, Phillipa Soo and Jake McDorman. Dopesick premieres October 13 on Hulu.

Topics: Dopesick, Hulu