In his brilliant feature filmmaking debut Maddie’s Secret, actor & comedian John Early plays a food influencer whose recent career successes unwittingly resurface trauma from her past.
That’s right, her.
How about we take this to the next level?
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To play the eponymous Maddie, Early is be-wigged, padded, lightly dusted with that “all-natural” makeup look, and yes, even tucked. But is it drag? It’s a question he’s continued to grapple with as the film begins its rollout into theaters the month after premiering to great acclaim at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall.
“When I’m asked about if I classify this as drag, I don’t think I do,” Early shares with Queerty, carefully pointing out that he doesn’t say that to be dismissive of the art form (“I love drag—I worship drag!”). He admits, “I’ve done drag once, in a bar setting, and I was awful at it. It’s a different skill, and I’m not strong enough!”
Where drag finds its power in gender performance on an exaggerated scale, Maddie is, by her nature, “humble and small,” so Early’s work here reflects that, evoking an authentic sense of femininity in subtle gestures, like the way she flits her eyes with excitement, or how her hair falls naturally around her face.
The seasoned performer knows there’s a bit of an audience buy-in—that seeing an actor wearing a wig might make you assume Maddie’s Secret is meant to be some big, broad comedy. And it is often very, very funny. But in so perfectly satirizing both the melodramatic “women’s pictures” of the ’50s and the Lifetime-ready “message movies” of the ’80s & ’90s, it becomes one before your very eyes, with a troubled heroine you can’t help but root for.
Maddie’s the kind of doe-eyed ingenue who’s too perfect for her own good. She’s got an adoring husband Jake (The Paper‘s Eric Rahill) who always encourages her, a best friend Deena (A League Of Their Own‘s Kate Berlant) who’s maybe a little too obsessed with her, and a job at the vaunted Gourmaybe test kitchen—a clear riff on Bon Appétit internet foodie empire—where she can explore her passion for vegetarian cooking.
Even when she’s forced to get competitive with her brusque colleague Emily (Love‘s Claudia O’Doherty), there’s not a single dark or malicious thought in Maddie’s body… except for those she’s had about herself, which she’s tried her best to suppress ever since her traumatic childhood, raised by a negligent mother (the iconic Kristen Johnston).
In many ways, Maddie represents parts of Early that he’s been suppressing, the side of him that runs counter to modern expectations of the urbane gay male. “She really is a kind of distillation of the more sincere, open-hearted, naive parts of me that I have spent years trying to cover up with my taste in culture and my hot takes and my perfectly calibrated sense of irony,” he jokes.
And in that sense, even in its archness, Maddie’s Secret is anti-irony, a surprisingly sincere movie that dares its audience to be vulnerable, too.
Oh, sure, you’ll laugh when Maddie signs up for intensive dance classes at a radically queer-inclusive fitness center (in scenes that clearly pay homage to one of Early’s favorites, Showgirls), but you’ll also feel your eyes well with tears when she finally works up the courage to ask for the help she so desperately needs.
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It’s a remarkable tonal tightrope, one which Early was delighted to discover his cast & crew were game to walk with him:
“Despite everyone being like deeply hilarious, and maybe prone to bit-making, I really didn’t have to explain the tone that intensely to people,” he recalls. “They just totally got on board, and there was no squeamishness around doing the more intensely emotional stuff, and no squeamishness around me being a woman. Like, I was doing sex scenes with Eric Rahill—who knows me in my life as a man—and it was totally fine. Everyone was very dignified, actually!”
And clearly it helped that he surrounded himself with plenty of longtime friends & collaborators who trust him implicitly: “I just knew so immediately that he was going to tap into something so unusual and special… because he was so exacting with his vision,” shares Berlant, who’s been working with Early for well over a decade now. “I just have full confidence in John in a way that I don’t have for myself or anyone else.”
SNL alum Vanessa Bayer—who plays a pivotal role in the film we won’t spoil here—expresses a similar sentiment: “John asking me to do anything, he doesn’t even have to explain to me what it is, I just trust him so much. He’s one of the funniest, most talented, brilliant people I’ve ever met. And so I think the second it came out of his mouth I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll do it. I don’t have to read it.’”
The only hurdle left was for Early to get out of his own head long enough to inhabit Maddie, while still remembering that he was the one running the show as the director. And though he admits it was pretty “hot and heavy” underneath the drag of it all, he was shocked by how seamless it all felt once he was properly wigged, tucked, and transformed.
“There was a lot of physical discomfort, but I was so thrilled with the success of what the designers did. I was soaring on the illusion of that, so I didn’t really care.” O’Doherty adds: “He was amazing at it… apart from the fact that he was so sweaty the whole time.”
And you’ll be amazed, too. Even longtime fans of John Early’s work will forget they’re watching one of his characters, finding themselves moved by and caught up in the secrets of a woman named Maddie.
When we suggest he should be nominated for Best Actress for the performance, most of his co-stars agree: “Whatever part he plays, he’s so authentic,” says Kristen Johnston before cracking: “And you know there isn’t a lot of authenticity left with the ladies these days. So let’s just say that!”
Maddie’s Secret is now playing in select theaters across the country. Check out the Magnolia Pictures website to find out where you can see it at a theater near you.
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Your move, Mike White.
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