Netflix films true crime thriller ‘The Good Nurse’
A tiny tent city cropped up on Morgan Street in Stamford almost overnight, right in the shadows of the Tully Medical Center. While doctors and nurses bustled from patient to patient at the immediate care center, movie production crews were busy setting up their own.
Aside from the massive equipment trucks that lined the road on Thursday, filming for “The Good Nurse,” an upcoming Netflix true crime film about a longtime nurse with murderous tendencies, remained almost undetectable.
Academy Award-winning actor Eddie Redmayne stars as Charles Cullen, who killed anywhere between 40 and 300 patients while working in critical care units across New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Two homicide detectives caught Cullen in December 2003, after 16 years flitting between nursing gigs. In the end, it was a fellow nurse — Cullen’s co-worker and friend played by Jessica Chastain — who helped take him down.
On the back lot of 90 Morgan St. — a massive, brutalist collection of medical condominiums — little linoleum forts housed film equipment, tired production assistants, and an endless stream of granola bars. All trying to escape from the torrential rain, crew members hustled from one prop truck to another.
The beat-up cars with New Jersey license plates used for the film blended in perfectly with the patients pulling in to see their physicians. Not even Hollywood sensibilities in Stamford could stop the everyday churn of medicine.
Filming on Morgan Street is slated to continue until Friday, according to city spokesperson Arthur Augustyn. A few days later, crews will migrate to a residential block in Waterside for a handful of days.
Real estate agent Stephen Alliegro showed up at 6 a.m. to open up doors for the production crew to kick off production, and even he felt a little thrilled by the movie magic happening on the property.
“There was a sign on the door that said ‘green room’ on it and everything, like it was ‘Saturday Night Live,’ ” he said.
He said his 19-year-old daughter has taken to telling friends that her dad is officially in on the movie business.
Alliegro represents a semi-retired doctor with an office at 90 Morgan St., and a location scout approached him about filming in the space. Saying yes was a no-brainer, he said. His client only sees patients sporadically throughout the week; becoming a film set was a quick way to make cash. In the end, the crew opted to use his office as a dressing room for the talent.
And while this is his first time brokering real estate for the movie business in Stamford, Alliegro is familiar with this kind of work. As a real estate agent in New York, he saw how lucrative film deals could be, especially for on-screen locations.
“Netflix has deep pockets,” Alliegro said. “You’re not going to get rich off this, but what the heck.”