Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne on teaming up for 'The Good Nurse'

The actors star in ‘The Good Nurse,’ a chilling true-crime thriller for Netflix about a serial killer and the nurse that helped bring him to justice

Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne’s careers were, perhaps, always on a collision course. Their similar red-haired, fair-skinned appearances have long been compared. At the 2017 Golden Globes when they presented together, host Jimmy Fallon introduced them by rapping “Chastain and the Redmayne” to the beat of Cypress Hill's “Insane in the Membrane.”

Since meeting at a children’s film festival in Italy years ago, they’ve been friends, too. Even if they’ve occasionally verged on being rivals.

“I think we needed ‘The Danish Girl,’ because everyone always talks about how we look alike,” Chastain says. “I took a picture of him in costume in character and I emailed Eddie and I said, ‘Stop taking my roles, (expletive).’”

“The Good Nurse,” which premiered over the weekend at the Toronto International Film Festival, brings Chastain and Redmayne together on screen for the first time. It’s a deft, chilling true-life drama that revolves around the case of Charles Cullen, a nurse at East Coast hospitals who murdered at least 29 patients. The film is directed by Tobias Lindholm and adapted by screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns (“1917,” “Last Night in Soho”) from Charles Graeber’s 2013 book, “The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness and Murder.”

Chastain plays Amy Loughren, a New Jersey single-mother nurse who befriends Cullen (Redmayne), after he’s newly hired. In an interview together at a Toronto hotel ahead of the film’s premiere, their easily apparent chemistry in the film was even more effusive in person.

“We play friends,” Chastain says, over-emphasizing “play.” “That was hard.”

“It was a joy,” beams Redmayne, causing Chastain to laugh and sigh: “He can’t even pretend.”