New Ratched Trailer Features Sarah Paulson, Cynthia Nixon, Lesbianism

Ryan Murphy's queer, noir Netflix series about the origins of the sadistic Nurse Ratched has a fabulous new trailer.

Tracy E. Gilchrist

Tracy E. Gilchrist is the VP of Editorial and Special Projects at equalpride. A media veteran, she writes about the intersections of LGBTQ+ equality and pop culture. Previously, she was the editor-in-chief of The Advocate and the first feminism editor for the 55-year-old brand. In 2017, she launched the company's first podcast, The Advocates. She is an experienced broadcast interviewer, panel moderator, and public speaker who has delivered her talk, "Pandora's Box to Pose: Game-changing Visibility in Film and TV," at universities throughout the country.

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Tracy E. Gilchrist

September 08 2020 1:19 PM EST

May 31 2023 5:41 PM EST

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Horror and film noir meet in the Sarah Paulson starrer Ratched, and the final trailer for the exquisitely over-the-top series is out now.

From Ryan Murphy and Evan Romansky, the Netflix series imagines the formative life of the young Mildred Ratched, the sadistic nurse from the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the role for which Louise Fletcher won the Academy Award.

For the eight-episode series, Paulson, a longtime fixture of Murphy's projects including American Horror Story and American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson, steps into Nurse Ratched's sensible shoes at an institution to explore the origins that made her the terror she became.

The post-World War II series is lush with shots of California's Central Coast and hearkens to Hitchcock films and film noir as Ratched's motives for worming her way into working at an asylum are revealed. There's also plenty of gore blended with queer content and camp as is Murphy's hallmark.

Hints of the show's queer sensibility and its LGBTQ+ storyline turn up in the latest phantasmagorical trailer for the series that drops on September 18.

In the trailer, the head of the asylum, the maniacal Dr. Hanover (Jon Jon Briones), claims he's perfected a method for the lobotomy that will cure "juvenile distraction, lesbianism, mania." Meanwhile, Cynthia Nixon's Gwendolyn Brooks (press secretary for the California governor, played by Vincent D'Onofrio) gets to the heart of her own desire.