TORONTO – Considering its premise, the surprise in “Maddie’s Secret,” a world premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, isn’t that it’s less bonkers than you might think. It also isn’t John Early’s fantastic in-drag or crossdressing (take your pick) performance as the title character. Considering Early’s previous work, that was somewhat expected. The surprise is Early’s confidence and vision behind the camera in his feature directorial debut.
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Inspired by Lifetime movies of the late ’80s and ’90s (Early has referenced the legendary Meredith Baxter showcase “Kate’s Secret” publicly), this melodrama follows Maddie Ralph (Early), a dishwasher for Gourmaybe, a fictional division of Condé Nast that makes cooking videos on social media. Maddie is inherently a good girl. Kind, sweet, and doesn’t have a competitive bone in her body. In many ways, she’s the polar opposite of her workplace best friend and fellow dishwasher, Deena (Kate Berlant), who has no filter and even less qualms about making her affections for Maddie super-obvious.
In truth, Maddie has a couple of secrets she’s hiding from the world. One is her own imaginative cooking skills. When her doting husband Jake (Eric Rahill) makes a video of her concocting one of her recipes in their kitchen, he uses his skills as a video editor to give it some polish. Convincing her to publish it online, she wakes up the next morning to discover it’s already been viewed 600,000 times. Whether Maddie is ready for it or not, a new cooking star has been born. Within hours, her skeezy boss at Gourmaybe, Zach (Connor O’Malley), promotes her to on-screen talent, putting her directly into competition with its top chef, the snarky Emily (Claudia O’Doherty).
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But Maddie has an even bigger, more dangerous secret. As a child, she battled bulimia. A secret she has hidden from everyone around her, including her husband. When the stress of her new career begins to escalate, and when she receives social media hate for her “healthy” appearance, those long-suppressed demons return.
To be clear, “Maddie’s Secret” never mocks anyone battling the far too common eating disorder (Maddie is intentionally never shown throwing up). What Early, who also wrote the screenplay, has his sights on is the hilarious tropes of the movie-of-the-week genre. And he almost completely pulls it off.
Theoretically, “Maddie’s Secret” could have been an online sketch or short film. And at 98 minutes, it doesn’t overstay its welcome, but it comes frustratingly close. Early and his cast attempt to balance playing the dramatic material “straight” with comedic characters and moments thrown in. It’s a fine line between classic camp and intentional camp. The movie dips its toe in both. There is some rough sailing, mainly from a middle act that, um, drags before the last hilariously third comes to life.
Early is assisted by a fantastic Rahill, who gives the most grounded performance in the movie as Maddie’s husband, a sparkling Vanessa Bayer as a youth-obsessed patient at an eating disorder treatment center, Pat Regan as a scene-stealing nurse at the aforementioned center, Kristen Johnston giving some depth to Maddie’s almost cartoonish mother, and Berlant, who brings as much subtlety as possible to a butch dyke lesbian who is inherently not so subtle.
There is one last secret Maddie is hiding, however. It’s Early’s shockingly impressive directing skills. And, no, we’re not overstating his talents. A filmmaker can storyboard their project beforehand for years on end. That doesn’t mean the end result will meet the expectations of their vision. Early’s skill at shot composition goes beyond attempting to craft a homage to the movie of the weak genre. There is an inherent confidence that shines through and is often why it transcends descending into an extended sketch (some swift cutting from editor Danny Scharar also assists him).
And of course, Early pulls this all off as the only cis male playing a female character in the movie. This isn’t new. Other actors have pulled off the same feat, notably Divine and Charles Busch, but it’s been a long time since it’s worked as well as it does in “Maddie’s Secret.” Then again, “Oh, Mary’s” Cole Escola, who is no stranger to being the only drag performer on stage, and is a friend of Early’s, was sitting front and center at the premiere, laughing their head off. Maybe this is the start of a new era of drag cinema. We certainly wouldn’t be mad at it. [B-]
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