Richard Sackler

Richard Sackler is a Purdue Pharma executive with something to prove, eager to step out from his family's shadow and turn a new painkiller into a blockbuster. He talks in the confident language of medicine and salesmanship at once, convinced that OxyContin is a breakthrough rather than a risk. He wants scale, speed, and vindication.

Stuhlbarg plays him as a true believer rather than a cartoon villain, which is far more unsettling — his certainty never wavers, his charm is real, and his need for his father's approval curdles into something monstrous precisely because he never registers it as monstrous. The performance stays controlled, clinical, almost gentle, which is what makes it chilling.