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Editor’s note: This interview was originally published on September 6, 2025 at the Toronto International Film Festival. Magnolia Pictures will release the film at New York City’s IFC Center on Friday, June 19; in Los Angeles on Friday, June 26; and in additional cities to follow.
Opening night at the Toronto International Film Festival is always a scene, but the particulars of your scene? It’s a matter of which big world premiere you’re hitting up first. While the festival’s official opening night gala was Colin Hanks’ loving and insightful documentary “John Candy: I Like Me,” the festival’s many sections have their own openers, like the forward-thinking Discovery section. This year, opening night for the Disco crowd was all about John Early’s feature directorial debut, “Maddie’s Secret.”
And what a crowd it was. On hand for the appropriately semi-secret film’s big premiere at the Royal Alexandra Theatre, Early and his cast and crew (including Kate Berlant, Conner O’Malley, and Vanessa Bayer), plus pals like Cole Escola and Wallace Shawn, and just about every name in alt-comedy you can think of. A raucous assortment of comedy freaks and theater nerds? Pretty perfect for what Early throws down in his film, in which he stars as the titular Maddie, a budding food influencer whose relationship with the camera and delicious treats is, well, pretty fraught.
Early’s inspirations for the film run the gamut, and the star and filmmaker has been open about wanting to blend everything from Sirkian melodramas to old-school TV movies of the week to plunge us into his very specific, very funny, and often weirdly moving mindset. It’s a hell of a debut for Early, one so gimlet-eyed that you almost (almost) forget that Early is playing a woman, nailing his long-held dreams to play a classic ingenue. Mostly, it’s hard to explain a) just how interesting and out of the box “Maddie’s Secret” is, b) how deeply it speaks to Early as a person and a performer, and c) how incredibly fun it is to talk to Early about all of this.
And we made him do just that, forcing the disarmingly kind and (it has to be said!) quite bushy-tailed filmmaker, comedian, and star out of bed the morning after his big premiere to sit down with IndieWire to chat through “Maddie’s Secret” in the lobby bar of his Toronto hotel. From “Showgirls” to “Red Shoe Diaries,” to whatever the hell is going on with food influencing these days, and at least a few moments interrupted by the repeated, piercing screams of a nearby child, Early has always been a major talent to watch. With “Maddie’s Secret,” his long-gestating evolution into filmmaker and movie star is complete.
The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
IndieWire: True to its name, the film was made relatively in secret. You joked last night about, like, making it for five dollars under cover of darkness. How did this actually come together?
John Early: Well, first of all, I think it’s so gauche to post a Deadline article before you’ve even released something. We obviously live in an age where you have to boast, you have to be your own publicist. Anything that happens, it does have to come through your platform for it to get any traction. It’s a very grave reality.
I was very clear with everyone involved that I didn’t want to post behind-the-scenes pictures, because I didn’t want it to destroy the illusion of Maddie. I don’t want you to see me with clips in the wig, eating a Starbucks egg bite, because it’s a delicate fairy tale that I only want to exist with the vintage lenses we use, the old Hollywood lenses. I want it to always have a glow.
I just think it’s so insane to post about something before it comes out. “What if it’s bad? What if it never gets bought? What if no one likes it?” Harris Mayersohn, who is one of the lead producers on this, he made “Rap World” with Conner and Eric [Rahill] and Jack Bensinger, and he made “Our Home Out West” with my dear friend Cole Escola, so I was just very excited by the idea of making something in this incredibly off-the-grid way. I wanted to have my own version of that. I’ve spent a lot of time in the trenches, trying to get things made. It’s years of trusting in the industry to deliver me to the masses, and then realizing that they sadly cannot.
You have to do it for yourself.
I’ve written so many things by myself with friends that just have never seen the light of day. I was like, “I just want to make something right now.” I want to be able to hire my friends, not just the actors, but the designers, who come from more of [an] underground art fashion world. I wanted to be able to hire them without financiers getting scared. You have to work at a certain budget level for it to feel not that risky for financiers.
They’re not going to show up on set one day and be like, “What are you doing with my $10 million?”
Exactly. [Laughs, leans into my recorder, joking] Even though this did cost $10 million, and the buyer should give us $10 million.
I went to see a screening in L.A. of “Death of a Cheerleader” with Tori Spelling and Kellie Martin, and I was like, “Oh, my God. This is it. This is actually what I want to do, and actually what we can do,” because you’re seeing people work with a very low budget, … but seeing that movie and then going to this TV movie rabbit hole, I was like, “We can actually maintain a lot of the dignity of this old Hollywood style of shooting with our budget, in my house, in Kate’s car.”
I said this on stage last night [at the premiere], or I actually didn’t say this. I wanted to say this on stage.
You were thinking it.
So thank God you’re here! The other thing was that I wanted to play an ingénue. I was looking for the ingénues of contemporary life. And to me, that was the food influencer girls. They are my fairy princesses. I wanted to make this dark comic fairy tale.
And, simultaneously, I felt a very distinct shift, not like in general, not like a “vibe shift” — and I said that in quotes, rolling my eyes! — but turn on my algorithm, where suddenly, food content changed in form very dramatically. It went from the naturalistic Bon Appétit thing of “there’s a camera in the test kitchen,” and their personalities are very gently spilling out, and they’re experts, and there’s a confidence. Suddenly, there became this very rigid, uniform, homogenous style in the way food content was shot, where it was like, “They’re slapping meat!” They’re literally, with their hands, smacking meat. The camera’s really low, it’s at a blowjob angle. And the sounds! The ASMR stuff is so weird. The creamy food slapping the pan.
Suddenly, food content became very sinister to me and very sexual. There’s people cutting sandwiches, putting the sandwiches right to the camera, squeezing the juices. It’s labial! I started to feel this feeling of, “We are very sexually repressed, and it’s coming out in the food content.” It’s probably coming out in a lot of other ways, but in my algorithm, it was through the food.
‘Maddie’s Secret’TIFFBecause it’s not so much coming out in movies. And these trend stories, especially about Gen Z, and how they don’t want sexual content in their entertainment. I want to be there for them, but I also get that they didn’t grow up watching “Red Shoe Diaries.”
Well, “Red Shoe Diaries” [is] obviously a huge influence [on] this movie. Unintentionally! Unconsciously!
As these kind of elements were coming together, the ethos, the frame of reference, and the dark algorithmic thing that was pulsating under it all, I did arrive at bulimia more metaphorically. I’m not on some journey to talk about bulimia, which is maybe foolish of me because I now have to answer to this movie that’s out in the world. But I felt quite potently when I was seeing this stuff on my algorithm that there is this binge-y quality, obviously, to taking in content, to scrolling. It made sense to me that the act of purging is a kind of expression of that repression.
I was more excited about putting some of the things I see right now in the world through this TV movie, melodrama lens. It was about capturing this hysterical expression of repressed memories and energy and sexuality, artistically, for me, it’s more potent than had I done a really one-to-one, “This is what’s going on in contemporary life.”
[Piercing scream of a child]
What is happening with this child?
I don’t know.
Is someone murdering a child?
Should we say something?
Well! You have this wonderful director’s statement about how making this film brings you back into a place you loved when you were younger, what you call “Girl World.” What was your first entrée into Girl World?
I arrived at a new school in fifth grade. There was a literal, visual choice, it was like I could either play flag football with these guys who were so mean to me, or I could go to the girls who were funny and liked to talk, and hanging out didn’t include physical violence. It’s astonishing, actually, that I had the courage to do this and that children have the courage to do this.
I remember actively making the choice and physically walking to the girls and being like, “I know that I’m risking social safety,” but on some level, I was like, “That’s worth it.” It’s worth the bullying to just actually have friends that want to hang out and talk and watch funny things. So I chose girls, and I paid a price, but it was the best choice I ever made.
There’s this crazy thing that happens. Girls, they go through heavy shit really early on. Obviously, the boys are too, but there’s no outlet for talking about it. And one of those things is eating disorders, and despite how much more emotionally mature I found my girl friends to be, we still were too young to process an eating disorder. It’s a very, very alarming thing, obviously.
I’m just trying to think back to what we would learn in school when they—
When they roll in the TV and you watch “The Secret Life of Mary-Margaret: Portrait of a Bulimic.”
Even in those stories, there’s just such shame. It’s shame.
Completely. And it’s so salacious. It’s so pornographic and salacious. And they’re rolling in for you to watch, and you’re like, “This looks fun, actually.”
Movie day!
And you’re sending the wrong message. It was so devastating. When someone would have an eating disorder, it was like they totally recede and withdraw. We didn’t have the emotional vocabulary to talk about it. It’s physically very scary. I had a friend whose fingernails were blue and who was losing her hair. And we were 13.
I didn’t mean to go to the heavy place. Girl World! Thank God I grew up in this time. There was physical media. I had a friend whose aunt lived in New York and had a VHS of “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story.”
No way!
I had already started writing [this movie] when I was like, “Oops, this already exists.” I was like, “Great, John. You fucking idiot. You thought you were so original,” because I also was like, “I’m going to do a ‘Shaft’ score. I’m going to do a ’70s score.” And then when I remembered “Superstar,” I was like, “John, it’s like a Burt Bacharach, Karen Carpenter score. It’s the same fucking thing, you fucking idiot!”
What did making this teach you about the actual act of directing?
In some ways, this took a long time for me to do. I’ve always wanted to direct. In a way, I’ve essentially directed things too before, collaboratively with people. When people come on to execute my vision, it’s a kind of directing. But I’m so happy I’m this age, because there was less ego involved. Had I been younger, I think I would’ve had a little tighter of a grip, and I would’ve tried to prove to people in every moment that I deserve to be there and to be in this position of power.
“I’m in charge.”
“I’m in charge, and here’s why I’m in charge, and can everyone circle up, so I can explain why I’m in charge?” The other thing was … I had a telepathic connection to my lead actress.
[Laughs]
I was like, “Oh, I know what to do.” I was like, “I’m directing myself,” but in this totally unconscious way. It was very wild. I don’t know. I also think that the acting, stylistically, I didn’t have to hold anyone’s hand, the people I hired, the cast. I would just do Maddie, and then they would mold themselves around what I was doing.
The biggest thing I learned was just the only way for me, I’m not Terrence Malick. I can’t like be, “Let’s fucking roam around and get beautiful shots.” I really was like, “The only way is preparation and coming in with a plan.” Especially at the budget level we were working, if you didn’t have a plan, it all fell apart.
I’m very proud of its visual directness, and I say this with love, the dumbness. There were moments where we were trying to do more elevated camera work. And then I was like, “I’m sorry. It’s just going to be her POV. And I’m going to make the actors look directly into the camera. I’m sorry.”
You also have all these wonderful 360 shots that just keep going. There’s one scene where you and Kate are fighting after dance class, and you do this giant spin around, and then Kate gets in her car-
[Laughs] Well, that is fully “Showgirls.” There’s obviously spiritual homage to “Showgirls” in this movie; it was the North Star for the first half. That was kind of the joke, [that] we’re treating Bon Appétit as if it’s backstage at “Showgirls,” it’s that ruthless and catty, that sexually provocative and insane. That was always the joke to me.
How did you land on Maddie’s look?
No one has asked me this yet! I told every designer, the hair and makeup people, the costume designers, even the cinematographer, production designer, “My main prompt to you guys: She’s an angel. Whatever that means to you, she’s an angel. She needs to be glowing. There can’t be any hard, sour colors; it has to be bright and sincere.”
“No makeup” makeup.
And that the wig was messy, but cute. Right before [we shot], there was a controversy as to whether we would do eyelash extensions, and I got them, and I had a meltdown because I looked like a Muppet. I literally got home, and I felt like I was 12 years old. I could not believe how I looked. I looked like a Kardashian. And I was like, “That’s not Maddie.”
The reason we were going for it, to the hair and makeup team’s credit, they were so brilliant, they knocked it out of the park. But they were thinking like, “Oh, that can feminize you very quickly and save time for us.” But I was like, ” But, you guys, I want close-ups. I want a lot of close-ups.” And Maddie is so humble. She would never-
She would never get eyelash extensions.
Never. But I looked crazy. And I went immediately back, I drove back to the eyelash place, and I got it removed. The women were like, “What?” They were like, “You’re not happy?” I was like, “It’s hard to explain.” So then I went to a woman in LA who gave me an eyebrow tint and a lift, and I was so self-conscious about what I was doing, obviously. I was like, “It’s for a movie.” She was like, “I don’t care.” After it was over, she was like, “You look so cute.”
But no, it was just realism. In order to achieve realism, I had to exaggerate things. I always imagined Maddie as having small breasts, and then the costume designers were like, “John, if we want to create the proportions of a woman, you need to have bigger breasts so that your waist looks smaller.” It totally informed Maddie’s backstory when I was like, “Oh, no, no. Of course, she needs to have bigger breasts, not just for the proportions, but also for her to be ashamed of and self-conscious about.” And then I had hip pads!
And Maddie’s clothes were ultimately very humble, and it was not expensive.
Yes, it’s very sweet. You’re like, “I know that girl.”
That’s my dream with her, is that she actually has that kind of “Little House on the Prairie,” American Girl doll iconography, where you’re like, “Maddie. It’s Maddie.” And my dream is to make three Maddie movies.
You should make an American Girl doll movie.
Thank you. Thank you. That’s what this leads to, and it just ruins my life. I’m writing the American Girl doll movie, I’m like a millionaire, but I’m in hell.
“Maddie’s Secret” premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.
English (US) ·