John Early’s directorial debut “Maddie’s Secret” stars the comedian as the titular character in his own John Waters-esque dramatic comedy.
Early plays innocent dreamer and food influencer Maddie, and he told TheWrap his portrayal of the wide-eyed ingenue was not a commentary on trans-visibility instead a grounded comedy in which he happens to play a woman.
“To me, the joke was never that I was playing a woman. The joke was playing an ingenue,” Early told TheWrap at the Toronto Internal Film Festival Friday. “I understand that there might be some sensitivity around that, but that’s part of the risk of this movie.”
“There’s a lot of sensitive subject matter in this movie, and it’s almost by design,” he added. “Because of that, it puts a gun to my head as a performer and a director to take it seriously.”
Maddie’s love for food is also a curse as the influencer secretly struggles with an eating disorder while navigating the challenges of growing online fame and her chaotic personal life.
“Maddie’s Secret” premiered at TIFF this week, and Early said he appreciated the audiences embrace of the tonal shifts in the film.
“They didn’t feel, or at least it seemed they didn’t feel, betrayed by some of the turns, the tonal shifts in the movie,” Early said.
The comedian and actor shot the film in February. His cast lauded the first-time director for his quick and efficient work, but several said they never had any doubts.
“I remember John emailing me or calling, trying to be like, ‘I think it’s really going to be good,’ trying to convince me in a way,” Vanessa Bayer said, laughing off the fact that Early assumed she wouldn’t approve. “I would trust John so implicitly, and I just think he’s so brilliant.”
Kate Berlant applauded Early’s process, saying it seemed as if the film came together almost “magically.”
“We’re making it, and it was aggressively fast in a way that I think really served the process because there wasn’t time, and there probably shouldn’t be time to, really rip it apart and obsess,” Berlant said.
The director-star added that for years he had been waiting for someone else to grant him an opportunity such as this one, and eventually he realized he had to make it himself.
The film took inspiration from Waters’ relationship with Divine, Harris Glenn Milstead. Early said he wanted to “be Divine,” the character actress and drag queen, and he finally took matters into his own hands. The comedian noted though that with this project he did not overanalyze the film and instead worked quickly to bring it to life.
“I wrote this in a fury, and I think the blindness was deliberate,” Early said. “If I had slowed down, I may have become self-conscious and stopped and been scared of it.”
