Jessica Chastain has signed on to star in Netflix's upcoming limited series The Retrievals, joining a cast that already includes Emilia Jones and Amy Ryan, multiple outlets reported this week.
The Oscar winner will portray Kaitlyn Langford, a former art historian who has undergone several failed IVF procedures over the course of about ten years. When Kaitlyn discovers she was a victim of criminal drug diversion at the Yale Fertility Center, the revelation upends her life and pushes her to become a central plaintiff in a landmark lawsuit against the university.
Jessica completes a trio of leads: Amy plays Carla Russo, the nurse at the centre of the scandal who admits to diverting fentanyl intended for patients and substituting it with saline, while Emilia plays Gabby Clemente, a New Haven bartender and student teacher who becomes a driving force behind the effort to hold Yale accountable.
The Retrievals is based on the Peabody Award-winning New York Times and Serial Productions podcast of the same name, which was hosted and reported by journalist Susan Burton. The show dramatises the actual Yale Fertility Center case, when a staff nurse was discovered to have been stealing the fentanyl meant for the women's care, leading to nearly 100 women undergoing excruciating IVF egg retrieval procedures without sufficient anaesthesia. According to Netflix, the show is about institutional failure, but it's also surprisingly about friendship and tenacity.
The casting adds another title to an already busy stretch for Jessica, who has the Universal horror film Other Mommy arriving in theatres October 9 and the Netflix thriller Heartland set for a November 13 release. The Retrievals has not yet set a premiere date.
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