Director of Nicole Kidman’s Nine Perfect Strangers series hopes it helps psychedelic therapy go mainstream ‘for the salvation of humanity’

Kidman plays a therapist who uses psychedelics on her clients in the series. Jonathan Levine wanted it to reflect open-mindedness about psychoactive therapies

There will probably be huge demand for MDMA, psilocybin, ayahuasca and other psychedelic substances used in therapies once they are legalised

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Nicole Kidman as psychedelic therapist Masha in a still from Nine Perfect Strangers. The director of the limited series on Hulu hopes it helps the therapies portrayed go mainstream. Photo: Hulu

Published: 8:15pm, 20 Sep 2021Updated: 10:37am, 21 Sep 2021

This article contains spoilers.

Midway through Hulu’s limited series Nine Perfect Strangers, created by David E. Kelley, the guests at a luxurious wellness retreat on a remote stretch of the California coast realise that their host, Masha (Nicole Kidman), has been drugging them with psychedelics.

They’re initially upset: they hadn’t given consent for this. But none of them leaves.

While a form of psychedelic-assisted therapy is depicted throughout the series, based on the novel by Liane Moriarty (Big Little Lies), the show takes a lot of liberties. Masha is ignoring oodles of ethics, probably doesn’t even have a therapy licence and is definitely breaking the law. Yet she has an unerring belief that she can make her guests well again. And her belief is catching.

We wanted to … have the altered state just sort of take over so that you’re questioning what’s real and what’s not

Jonathan Levine

Nine Perfect Strangers director Jonathan Levine shares Masha’s belief: psychedelic therapy “is one of my top five options for the salvation of humanity”, he says.

To immerse himself in the topic prior to filming the series, Levine read How to Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan’s seminal book on psychedelic-assisted therapy, and consulted with a leader of a retreat for the use of ayahuasca, a psychoactive drink traditionally drunk in South America.