The Big Picture

Director Peter Berg was drawn to the subject matter of the limited series Painkiller due to his personal connection to the opioid crisis, having known many people whose lives were either ruined or lost due to addiction. The inclusion of real-life stories from families affected by the opioid crisis at the beginning of each episode was important for setting the tone and reminding viewers of the devastating real-world impact of OxyContin. Berg has a collaborative approach to filmmaking, encouraging creativity and ideas from both actors and crew members to create a more dynamic and unpredictable result that feels less structured and formulaic.

The limited Netflix series Painkiller, based on the book by Barry Meier and the New Yorker Magazine article “The Family that Built the Empire of Pain” by Patrick Radden Keefe, explores the origins of the opioid crisis in America and the destruction that it has left in its wake. Through a fictionalized retelling of events, the story illustrates how wealth, power, and greed led to mistruths that forever altered lives that were destroyed by the invention of OxyContin and the betrayal of public trust.

During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, Peter Berg, the director of all six episodes, talked about his personal connection to the material in Painkiller, including real-life stories from those coping with grief due to the opioid crisis at the beginning of each episode, creating a very collaborative environment on set, Matthew Broderick’s portrayal of Richard Sackler, how his longtime working relationship with Taylor Kitsch started, reteaming for the upcoming Netflix Western series American Primeval, and why that Friday Night Lights TV-universe movie hasn’t happened.

Collider: This is not easy subject matter. What drew you to this and made you want to tackle directing every episode? Obviously, that’s a big undertaking. So, what did you consider, in deciding to take this on, and what made you want to do it?

PETER BERG: If you’re gonna direct every episode and show up for that kind of workload, the question that I asked myself was, is the passion there? Do I have the fire in my belly, to show up and handle this subject at the level that it deserves to be serviced? The first thing with me, at this point in my life, is that I know more people that I can count on two hands, that have either died of opioids or had their lives ruined. I have friends who have died. I have family members who became addicted. I have friends whose children have become addicted. It’s very intense and it’s horrible. The toll that it takes on the family members is equal to the toll that it takes on the addict. So, I felt like I was at a place in my life where this is an issue that had touched me. And so, when Eric Newman, the executive producer, came to me and asked if I was interested, I thought about it, and I thought about the realities of opioids and addiction and how much it’s hurting so many people, and I felt like I had the internal drive and passion to go for something like making all six episodes.

Image via Netflix

Each of these episodes kicks off with a gut punch, with the real-life stories from families who have been touched by loss and grief from opioids. What made that something you wanted to do for this? Did you just feel that it was really important to set that personal connection, at the start of every episode?

BERG: I did. I thought it was important to set the tone. I also felt that, legally, we had to present a disclaimer at the front of each episode that not everything is real. A lot of it’s real, but not everything. The idea of starting this with a disclaimer would, for me, let Purdue Pharma a little bit off the hook because people would be like, “Well, I don’t know what’s real and what’s not real.” I feel like that’s what always happens with the disclaimer. And so, I thought, what if we could get parents whose children had died to read the disclaimer and then say, “Maybe there are some things in the show you’re about to see that aren’t exactly real. But what is real is the fact that my child died because of OxyContin.” I thought that would be a very effective way of getting the disclaimer out there and reinforcing the idea for the audience that maybe there are gonna be some entertaining aspects of what they’re about to watch, but this is not something to be taken lightly.

What was it like to work with those real-life families?

BERG: One of the things that was really profound for all of us was that, when we came up with the idea to do it, we were in Los Angeles editing, so we put out a call in the Los Angeles area. It was for a very small area, just the West Side of L.A. in the southern L.A. area, because that was the closest to where we could film. And within 10 hours one day, we had 80 families saying that they had lost children and they wanted to come talk. That was mindblowing. That was just in one area of Los Angeles. I’ve done a lot of unscripted work, and I’ve worked with family members who’ve gone through tragedies that were different than the opioid crisis, but still tragedies, and I suspected that these family members would want to have their moment to to tell even a moment of their child’s story. I wasn’t surprised at the pain that we experienced with all the families, and the grieving, which is still very much ongoing, and the anger. There’s real anger against these pharmaceutical companies and against Purdue Pharma, in particular, so they wanted to talk.

Image via Netflix

You’ve previously talked about how, on set, you like to encourage people to try different things and that you like to be open to ideas, not just from the actors, but from the crew. Have you always approached the work that way? Is that something that evolved, the more projects that you did?

BERG: The first filmmaker that I fell in love with was a guy named John Cassavetes, who made these incredibly improvisational films, like A Woman Under the Influence, with Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk. I’d watch Dog Day Afternoon with Al Pacino. I would watch these films that felt out of control, like controlled chaos, and I just took to that. They felt less structured and predictable and formulaic to me than the other movies that I was seeing. I always liked that there was a wildness to them. So, as soon as I got into a position where I was able to be the director on a film set, I instinctively went to my version of that, and that involved coming to the set with ideas, and coming to a scene with an idea of why we were doing the scene and what this scene should contain, and having words written and respecting those words. But if somebody had an idea or felt like, “Okay, what if I kind of turn it into this? And if he does that, I wanna do this. And if she does that, I wanna do this.” I wanted to just let it be, rather than trying to micro-control every moment of it. I thought maybe there would be some dynamic accidents. I think that there should be an element of uncontrollable to all of it. For me, that’s what I like. I like when I don’t know quite what’s gonna happen. People come to me on the set and they’re like, “What are we doing?” And I like saying, “I’m not sure. Let’s figure it out, and see what works and what doesn’t work. Let’s see who’s got an idea.” If nobody has an idea, okay, then I’ll have an idea, but I like seeing what other people bring to it. Sometimes those ideas can come from the guy holding the flag that’s blocking the light, who’s got a tool belt and who’s watching everything because he’s right there. I encourage everyone to participate creatively in the process, I’ve gotten really great ideas from some of the least likely sources.

Are people ever surprised that you encourage that level of collaboration? Do you have to sometimes convince them?

BERG: Yes. Some people are shy and they’re like, “Does he really mean that, or is he just saying it?” Sometimes it goes the other way because people get so comfortable improvising that I have to come up to them and be like, “I like the idea, but I’m not quite feeling that.” When you say that you don’t like someone’s improv, you’ve gotta be careful because you don’t wanna shut people off and make them feel afraid to try things. At the same time, you have to be able to say, “Maybe let’s bring it back here a little bit.” That’s a challenge because it’s risky for actors to improvise. They’re scared. They’re like, “Is this good? Is it bad? Is it stupid? Is it inspired?” If you shake your head one time, they’re probably gonna not do it again, so I try to always be supportive with it.

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Richard Sackler is such a difficult and challenging person to embody. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for Matthew Broderick to figure out how to portray him. What did you think about the way he brought him to life? What most struck you about his performance?

BERG: If you meet someone that’s a bad person and you spend time, one-on-one, with them, you’re gonna certainly come away with the belief that they don’t think of themselves as a bad person. They rarely do. And in many ways, Richard Sackler believed he was giving people their lives back and that, if you got addicted to OxyContin, you were a drug addict. They were making all this money, and they were gonna give it to museums. Unless you’re a stone cold psychopath, you figure out a way of making sense of anything you do and of your behaviors, even if, to anyone on the outside, they’re really bad. That was the case with Richard Sackler. I don’t think he thought of himself as a bad guy. He liked himself. He thought everything was pretty good. Matthew is just so likable and charming and a bit aloof, but in a really sweet way, that I think he was able to kind of tap into certain aspects of himself that lent a performance where a bad guy didn’t come off as simply a bad guy, but perhaps a bit odd and eccentric and somewhere on the spectrum.

Did you have conversations about how to handle Richard Sackler talking to the ghost of his uncle Arthur? What led to that fictionalized aspect of the series?

BERG: The idea came from, how do you get inside the head of a man who’s very, very private and who’s really not gone on record? There are very few indicators as to how his mind works. We came to believe that he really did learn a lot from his uncle, Arthur Sackler. It wasn’t his father that he was aspiring towards. It was his uncle. His uncle was in the back of his mind while he was birthing the company and growing the company, and then certainly as things were starting to unravel and the legacy was in jeopardy. That’s what we talked about.

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Clearly, you enjoy working with Taylor Kitsch. What do you remember about the first time you came across him?

BERG: The first time I came across him was at the final round of auditions for Friday Night Lights. I had pretty much already made up my mind that it was gonna be somebody else, and his manager, who’s a friend of mine, called me and said, “I found your guy.” I said, “Well, I think I already have him.” She was like, “No, let me bring him out to where you’re doing the auditions.” I was like, “You know, I think I already have him.” And she said, “I’m bringing him out.” So, she brought him out while we were seeing actors, and I knew they were in the parking lot, so I went down to the parking lot. I’m pretty sure she did this on purpose, but she parked the car so that when he got out, the sun was behind him and he had the long hair, and he came around the corner of the car. He’s a good looking guy, but back then, he was a really good looking guy. He had the long hair and the walk, and he looked kind of like Paul Newman and Mick Jagger, rolled into one. I was like, “Yeah, this guy looks good.” And then, he walked up to me and his Canadian accent was so heavy. I was like, “Okay, that’s a problem.” I was like, “I’m gonna get you this part, but just don’t talk.” So, he read the lines with a neutral accent and I didn’t let him talk, at all. He got the part, and then it was straight to the dialect coach.

Did you immediately think of him and go to him for Painkiller?

BERG: Yeah, mainly because he was right for the part, but knowing him as well as I do, I know, and he’s talked about it publicly, that his sister, who he loves very much battled, an intense battle with OxyContin. Taylor took a bunch of time off from work to be by her side, for every step of her detoxing from opioids. It was a really close call with his sister, but she lived, and he’s very close to her now. So, I knew that when he read the part, he would have this connection and passion for it. He was the first one I went to, and really the only one.

Image via Netflix

And you’re reuniting with him again for American Primeval, right?

BERG: I am.

What made you want to take that on and direct all those episodes, and what made you see him in that?

BERG: After having done six episodes of Painkiller, it was a challenge, but it was also really creatively stimulating. It was awesome to be able to go that deep and spend that much time. You can’t do that with a movie. Six episodes is almost seven hours. It’s like a seven-hour movie. If you’re doing 10 or 12 episodes, it starts getting exhausting. For me, six is the sweet spot where I can manage the workload and really get to go on this journey. It’s very satisfying. So, I wanted to do another limited series. I had been editing Taylor in Painkiller, every day. We were getting ready to start casting for American Primeval, and every day, I was looking at Taylor, who’s really kind of perfect. I’ve worked with Mark Wahlberg quite a few times. I’ve worked with Samuel L. Jackson several times. I tend to work with the same people. When I get to trust and understand an actor, it’s like having a tool in a tool box that you wanna know how to use. When you know how to use that actor and understand that actor and have a short hand, you can just go deeper and the work gets better, and it’s fun. It’s fun to work with your friends. For American Primeval, we’ve been up in the mountains in New Mexico for 100 days, in the snow and the wind and the rain, with animals and bad weather and all kinds of weird stuff. In that situation, you wanna be with people that you trust and like.

A lot of actors tell me that they’d love to do a Western and a war movie. Do you find yourself personally drawn to Westerns?

BERG: I keep saying that I want to go to the South of France and make a love story with a boy and a girl and a guitar and a bottle of wine, and they just sit and talk and fall in and out of love, and it’s peaceful and beautiful. And then, I always end up in a war movie, or a Western, or a football set, or an oil rig exploding. I don’t know what it is, but I’m looking forward to the South of France and a love story. I guarantee it will be a love story, and then a pack of animals will stampede and there will be soldiers because I just can’t get out of my own way.

Image via Netflix

For a while there, you had talked about doing a TV universe based Friday Night Lights movie, and then you said that you’d accepted that it probably wouldn’t ever happen? Had you ever gotten far enough in thinking about that to know what that would have been? Did you have any sense of what that movie would have looked like?

BERG: We talked about it. Over the years, it’s come and gone. Writers have come in and pitched it. And there’s been a certain amount of excitement. And then, I’ll think about it and I’ll call Kyle Chandler or Connie Britton, who I like so much, and we’ll be like, “Yeah, but why? It was a great relationship. We have nothing but great memories. Why take the chance of coming back, and then we end up hating each other and make a really bad movie?” It’s tricky. It’s like going back to a relationship. It doesn’t always work.

Painkiller is available to stream at Netflix.