One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest: The Actresses Who Were Almost Nurse Ratched

Ratched brought back the most heinous fictional nurse ever with Sarah Paulson in the lead role, yet none of the character’s popularity would exist without Louise Fletcher, the original actress from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Milos Forman’s 1975 adaptation of Ken Kesey’s eponymous novel is widely considered one of the greatest movies ever made. This is due in large part to its highly-acclaimed cast, which includes the likes of Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd, and Brad Dourif, with Michael Douglas as the film’s producer.

Jack Nicholson stars as Randle McMurphy, a criminal who becomes the latest newcomer of Oregon State Hospital after pleading insanity to get out of prison labor. Once inside, he bonds with the rest of the patients and faces the tyrannical authority of the head nurse, the vicious Mildred Ratched (Louise Fletcher). Although Cuckoo’s Nest has plenty of achievements to pride itself on, such as its five major Academy Awards (the second film ever to achieve so), it’s Nurse Ratched who has become the definitive emblem of the movie.

Louise Fletcher delivered such a masterful performance that she managed to turn a regular human character into one of the most twisted villains in movie history. However, that almost wasn’t the case. Casting director Fred Roos suggested Fletcher to director Milos Forman and she quickly started chasing the part, but Forman first offered the role to several actresses with more solid acting backgrounds, such as Anne Bancroft (The Graduate), Angela Lansbury (Murder SheWrote), Ellen Burstyn (The Exorcist), and Geraldine Page (The Trip to Bountiful). The most famous candidate in Milos’s list was Jane Fonda, who was at the height of her career shortly after Barbarella and her Academy Award winning performance in Klute. Patricia Neal (The Day the Earth Stood Still) also auditioned, but she was turned down.

More than 40 years after her award-winning performance, it’s hard not to imagine Fletcher as Ratched. But it may be harder to imagine a more sensual interpretation of the evil nurse with Fonda in the role or perhaps a more compassionate take with Angela Lansbury. Forman also offered the part to Colleen Dewhurst, who was then known as one of the “Queens of Off-Broadway”. Dewhurst, Burstyn, and Bancroft might have implemented some of the traits that made them highly-lauded thespians, but they might not have brought the unique authenticity that Fletcher demonstrated with her undying determination to get the part. Other names that were considered (to varying degrees of plausibility) included Faye Dunaway, Jeanne Moreau, Shirley MacLaine, and even Audrey Hepburn, so Milos Forman’s concept for the character was surely flexible.

When Forman pursued Shelley Duvall for the role of Candy Starr, he realized Louise Fletcher’s potential, as they both acted in Thieves Like Us. All of Me star Lily Tomlin was Forman’s closest candidate while Fletcher was preparing to play Linnea Reese in Nashville, but what Forman saw in her back then was enough for him to make his final decision. Fletcher’s unstoppable determination also helped her get cast, as it took her over a year and several auditions to finally get the role. As Ratched, she demonstrated an expert ability to depict the perfect balance of cold calculation and a dictatorial thirst of control, yet she also injected the character with a nuanced human side with somewhat dutiful intentions that made her a complex character.

Louise Fletcher made Nurse Ratched a more evil antagonist than most mustache-twirling villains, and she achieved it without the need for hellish lairs or magical superpowers. It’s unlikely that any other actress could have understood the character so well, despite the other candidates’ impressive careers. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest couldn’t have had a better casting, and it seems Netflix’s Ratched knows it, as the show took several creative liberties to utilize the character and avoid predictable comparisons as much as possible.

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