You can tell a lot from a feature directorial debut. We’ve already seen that this year with filmmakers coming from outside traditional Hollywood paths, but for an established comedian like John Early, there’s already a certain expectation about the kind of film he might make. As one of the more prominent queer comedians working today, and someone whose work often comments on identity and performance, his first feature could have gone in almost any direction. Instead, he gave us Maddie’s Secret.
Maddie’s Secret feels like an amalgamation of the things that have inspired Early throughout his life. In fact, it often feels like a Lifetime movie, complete with the heightened emotions and earnest melodrama of a made-for-TV film from the 1990s or even an after-school special from the 1980s. The theatrical releases it most reminded me of were workplace comedies like Working Girl and Baby Boom, those films built around the idea that women could succeed in professional spaces while still navigating the expectations placed upon them.
That connection becomes even more interesting because Early casts himself as Maddie, a cisgender woman. If you’re familiar with John Early, your first assumption might be that this is a drag performance. It isn’t. That’s one of the film’s most surprising choices. Early is not playing a man in drag, nor is he portraying a transgender character. His intention appears to be the sincere portrayal of a woman who simply happens to be played by a man.
Whether that concept works for you will largely determine how much you connect with the film itself. Maddie works as a dishwasher for a food-influencer-focused media company. After a video of her cooking unexpectedly goes viral, she’s promoted from behind-the-scenes employee to on-camera culinary personality. From there, the film introduces a professional rivalry with a competing influencer, played by Claudia O’Doherty, who is terrific here. The two eventually find themselves competing for the opportunity to create menus for a Hulu sitcom that bears more than a passing resemblance to The Bear.
As Maddie’s career accelerates, the film reveals the secret referenced in the title. Maddie struggles with bulimia, an eating disorder she believed she had overcome. The pressures of her newfound success reignite those struggles, sending her into treatment and threatening both her rise to internet fame and her chance at the professional breakthrough she’s been chasing. Throughout the film, Early pairs these developments with frantic exercise montages and heightened emotional sequences that feel inspired by everything from Showgirls to Dirty Dancing. Nearly every scene feels intentionally reminiscent of something else. The result is a film that exists somewhere between homage, satire, and melodrama. There is so much love felt here for the things he pays homage toward, and this reminded me of when Will Ferrell and Kristin Wiig teamed up for A Deadly Adoption, which actually was a real Lifetime movie. Ferrell and Wiig could have just turned that film into a parody, but instead, they deadpanned every reaction, showing respect for the thing they had gotten to make. That kind of awareness comes through here as well, as Maddie’s Secret feels like it holds its predecessors with reverence.
In some ways, Early reminds me of what a filmmaker like John Waters might look like if he emerged in this particular cultural moment. The boundary-pushing isn’t coming from shock value alone. Instead, Early’s provocation comes from sincerely playing a woman in a story that tackles serious subject matter while surrounding it with exaggerated genre conventions and familiar pop-culture moments of divine inspiration.
I’m not entirely convinced the film works as a whole, but I admire how committed it is to its choices. Early clearly has a distinct voice and a specific artistic sensibility. Even when the movie loses me, I can see exactly what he’s trying to do.
This is not a film that will play broadly. Its audience is likely to consist of John Early fans and viewers who hear the premise and immediately think, “I need to see that.” If you’re one of those people, Maddie’s Secret may be worth seeking out.
One little annoyance, however, is the lack of audio description. Because the film hinges so heavily on the specifics of Early’s performance, having access to that information would have been valuable. I ultimately learned through other reviews that the presentation is intentionally naturalistic rather than drag-inspired. The makeup is understated, the hairstyle is realistic, and the goal is clearly to portray Maddie as an ordinary woman rather than an exaggerated character. I was eventually able to piece that together, but I shouldn’t have had to do additional research to understand a key aspect of the film’s presentation. This feels like a situation where audio description could have substantially improved my in film enjoyment, rather than a post-viewing research gig mixed with fragments of understanding.
Even so, Maddie’s Secret is a promising debut from a comedian whose filmmaking career is only beginning. Whether or not this particular experiment works for you, it’s difficult to deny that John Early has a style, a perspective, and something he wants to say. I’m curious to see where he goes next. I think I can say with full belief, there won’t be anything like Maddie’s Secret this year, and in a film with already many bold original choices, it is another feather in the cap of 2026.
Fresh: 6.5/10
