The real inspiration behind Pain Hustlers’ Lisa Drake explains

The events depicted in Pain Hustler They were loosely inspired by the Insys therapeutic scandal revolving around Liza Drake. Liza (Emily Blunt) takes center stage and is a key character in the case of Zanna, the movie’s fictional pharmaceutical company. Pain Hustler Takes creative liberties with the true story, with some details modified. Because of the differences between the real events and those depicted in the movie, there are a lot of questions about Liza’s identity, whether she was inspired by a real person, and what impact she really had in real life.

The figure of Pain Hustler Also includes Chris Evans, Andy Garcia and Catherine O’Hara. It primarily follows Lisa Drake, a single mother who becomes a morally dubious rep for a bankrupt pharmaceutical company and finds herself in a dangerous criminal conspiracy linked to America’s opioid crisis. The inspiration for the film comes from a 2022 book called The Hard Sell: Crime and Punishment in an Opioid Startup by Evan Hughes. Despite the several changes to the true story in Pain HustlerThe movie took inspiration for Lisa Drake from real people.

Pain Hustlers’ Lisa Drake was inspired by some real-life pharma reps

Emily Blunt’s character is not a real person

While Pain HustlerDr. Jack Neel is based on Insys Therapeutics CEO John Kapoor, and Pete Brenner drew inspiration from former Insys VP of Sales Alec Burlakoff, Lisa Drake is not a real person, and she is not based on a single figure in the story. She was instead likely inspired by a line in Evan Hughes’ report that Insys workers hired “A former exotic dancer.“But, Lisa Drake is a composite character Based on several real-life pharmaceutical reps, including Maria Guzman and Sunrise Lee, who had a lot to do with how the events unfolded.

Emily Blunt Pain Hustler Character is meant to serve as an amalgamation of the pharmaceutical reps who would go to extreme lengths to achieve success during the opioid crisis. She is also meant to serve as a representation of the innocent people Who swept up in the pharmaceutical world. To add a fictional character like Liza Drake is not surprising, because the film has a lot of creative freedom in order to entertain and intrigue its audience while keeping a loose inspiration from ​​the true story.

Maria Guzman was the real-life whistleblower who helped take down Insys

Guzman was an Insys sales rep

in Pain HustlerThe whistleblower is Lisa Drake, however The real person who helped take down Insys Therapeutics was Maria Guzman. Since the movie takes loose inspiration from real events and mirrors that happened in the Insys scandal, Liza Drake takes on a similar role to Maria Guzman, who was a sales rep for the company. Guzman became the first whistleblower in Insys history and worked with the feds to expose the pharmaceutical company as, in 2013, she filed a lawsuit that inspired a serious investigation into the company’s activities.

In the movie, Liza asks what Zanna is doing, but goes through with it so that Dr. Nell will give her the money for her daughter’s surgery. Because of her involvement in Zana’s criminal activities, she was sentenced to 15 months in prison. In fact, Insys fired Maria Guzman after she objected to the company’s bribes and refused to use the tactic herself, so she wasn’t even charged.

in 2019, Guzman was named Whistleblower of the Year by Taxpayers Against FraudA nonprofit organization. at the end of Pain HustlerLiza does her time and ends up selling Jackie’s skin care products alongside other former Zanna reps.

Is Liza’s daughter Phoebe based on a real person?

Phoebe’s medical condition motivated Liza’s actions

Given that Lisa Drake is not a real person, neither is her daughter, Phoebe. in Pain HustlerLiza is a single mother struggling to make ends meet. Despite her high-paying job at Zanna, she doesn’t make enough to cover the surgery needed for Phoebe’s serious medical condition., And that plot point is vital to the movie and its outcome, while also highlighting a real problem in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries.

While Phoebe is not based on a real personOne former Insys sales rep, Sunrise Lee, was a dancer before working for the pharmaceutical company, just like Lisa, and she also has kids. Similar to Liza’s story in the movie, Lee needed the money to provide for her children. However, none of them have an illness like the one that motivated the main character in Pain HustlerSo Phoebe is also mostly a fictional character.

Are other Pain Hustler characters inspired by real people?

The big thing to take into account of these Pain Hustler True story is that the characters in this movie are not based on real people. Liza is, as mentioned, a composite character of several different people in the Insys scandal. However, although they are not based on real people, some of them are inspired by real people. The most notable of these is Andy Garcia’s character, Jack Neal.

Dr. Jack Neel is based on Insys’ John Kapoor. In the film, Neel is the main investor of the fictional corrupt pharmaceutical company Zanna. In real life, Kapoor was the founder and CEO of Insys Therapeutics. Both men have been involved in legal troubles dealing with their activities in selling opioids. In real life, Kapoor was found guilty of racketeering in 2019 and was sentenced to 66 months in prison. However, while Neel ends up in jail in the movie, the real Kapoor gets out of jail after just two years.

However, the other main character, Chris Evans’ Pet Brenner, is not based on any real person. For him, he is a fictional character who takes on the features of Alec Burlakoff from Hughes’ novel. Burlakoff was sentenced to 26 months in prison with three years of parole for his part in the scandal. The side story with Liza’s daughter was all fictional, and there is no inspiration for Phoebe from Pain Hustler.