‘It goes so hard in both directions’: John Early and Kate Berlant on making you laugh and cry in new influencer satire

In his directorial debut Maddie’s Secret, Early plays a food influencer with bulimia in a wild flip on the modern melodrama They don’t make film heroines quite like Maddie Ralph any more. As the creation of comedian and actor John Early, the titular character of Maddie’s Secret is a bright-eyed ingenue who greets the day like the sun came out just for her, no matter that she’s trudging to her job as a dishwasher. Like the leading ladies of ’50s Women’s Pictures, she longs for something more t...

By Owen Myers