Nightmare nurse Annie Wilkes from the 1987 novel Misery is one of author Stephen King’s most monstrous creations – and that includes haunted hotels, killer cars and spiky toothed sewer clowns. In 1990, the chilling film version of Misery won Kathy Bates the Best Actress Oscar for her role as Annie. Plain old nobody Annie sure has a way of sneaking up on you.
“She is kind. She's kind of silly. She gets excited and acts like a little girl. There's something really disarmingly sweet about her. And then when she turns, it makes it that much more terrifying. I think she is so much scarier than just a straight-up monster, because she's so much more complicated than that,” says Lizzy Caplan, who plays Annie in Castle Rock S2.
The drug-stealing nurse Annie we meet in Castle Rock – a series based on various characters and events in Stephen King’s books, almost as a prequel – is just a handful of years away from becoming Misery’s romantic novel-obsessed Number One Fan who nurses and tortures her favourite author, eventually breaking his ankles to keep him bedridden and under her control so that she can force him to write more stories about her favourite character. But there is already something “off” about Annie.