Tag Christof for The New York Times
Keri Anderson/Netflix
In “Painkiller,” a six-episode series on Netflix, Kitsch plays Glen Kryger, the owner of a North Carolina auto repair shop. After Glen is prescribed OxyContin for a workplace injury, he descends into addiction – slowly, at first, then in free fall.
Keri Anderson/Netflix
The show — based on the Barry Meier book “Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America’s Opioid Epidemic” and the Patrick Radden Keefe article “The Family That Built an Empire of Pain” in The New Yorker — is the second prestige series, after “Dopesick,” to depict the opioid epidemic.
Tag Christof for The New York Times
Glen is a composite character, a stand-in for the many, many Americans who became addicted to OxyContin after their doctors prescribed it.
Bill Records
Kitsch, 42, landed his first big role in 2006 on “Friday Night Lights,” a series about high school football. He played Tim Riggins, a cocky fatherless athlete from a blue-collar family, which mirrored Kitsch’s own background.
Frank Connor/Walt Disney Pictures
After that, Hollywood didn’t seem to know what to do with Kitsch. In these years, he found himself taking time off to care for his younger sister, Shelby Kitsch-Best, who was struggling with addiction to opioids and other drugs.
Keri Anderson/Netflix
He asked Kitsch-Best to accompany him on the “Painkiller” set, as an adviser. “He really wanted very specific details about what’s going on in someone’s mind and how that would manifest in their body,” she said. “Those things are difficult to watch because it’s so real. But it’s good how real it is.”
Tag Christof for The New York Times
When Peter Berg, the“Painkiller” director, first sent Kitsch the script, he did so knowing Kitsch’s family history. And Berg could tell that the shoot was sometimes hard for Kitsch.
Miller Mobley/Paramount Network NYTCREDIT:
Though he started out as a pretty boy, Kitsch has made himself into an actor, which has meant a narrower path and likely a more arduous one.