IS THAT CURLEY’S DINER?
Netflix’s ‘The Good Nurse’ features local institutions
STAMFORD — Despite its New Jersey setting, Stamford residents will likely spot some familiar locations in Netflix’s latest true-crime film “The Good Nurse,” which was released on the streaming platform last week.
“The Good Nurse” is based on the real-life murders of serial killer Charles Cullen, a nurse responsible for poisoning anywhere between 29 and 400 patients over 16 years, and the brave actions of nurse Amy Loughren who helped bring him to justice.
Starring Academy Award winners Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne, “The Good Nurse” has since received positive reviews from both critics and audiences. This week it ranked on the platform’s list of most-watched movies.
The film began shooting in Stamford in April 2021, featuring local businesses scouted out by the streaming giant.
One of the film’s tensest moments finds Loughren — equipped with a wire — face-toface with her friend and former co-worker in a diner as she attempts to pull a confession from the killer before he can continue his crimes at a new hospital.
“The interesting thing about the diner scene as an institution or as a setup is there are so many given rules in a diner,” director Tobias Lindholm said when breaking down the sequence for the New York Times.
“At the same time, the diner is a public place, so you can’t really control it, which for a character with a specific want and need can be very problematic,” he added.
The actual booth where Chastain and Redmayne filmed the scene is located in Curley’s Diner, an institution for over seven decades in downtown Stamford.
Scenes shot at the diner were actually split between Curley’s and the Bedford Street Diner, down the street from the medical complex.
Though both locations were given the same background for the scene, when Loughren sits with a nurse from one of Cullen’s former hospitals, alert viewers can spot the differences in the lighting fixtures and entrance, both from Bedford Street Diner.
“It was something that the director liked more, it worked more for the story and more for the aesthetic,” the film’s location coordinator Elizabeth Bendelac told The Stamford Advocate of the location changes. “That’s usually how it works with locations. We’ll base it off of the aesthetic and the feel. We’ll also base it off logistics as well, so it just kind of worked out better.”
Curley’s Diner is no stranger to Academy Award winners. Actor Robert DeNiro sat at the counter there for the 2009 film “Everybody’s Fine.”
Filming began at the medical complex at 90 Morgan St. to represent Parkfield Hospital, a fictional stand-in for Somerset Medical Center where Cullen committed his final murders. A sunny yellow house on Beal Street in the Waterside neighborhood served as Loughren’s family home.
Nearby in Norwalk, film locations included Richard C. Briggs High School as the prison where Cullen was held after his arrest and the Bank of America building on the corner of Mechanic and Wall Streets which was converted to serve as the police station.
Several location owners previously told the Advocate that the amount of money Netflix was willing to pay to film on site was a significant incentive for the temporary closures, especially given the loss of business from the pandemic.