In 1986, a movie titled Kate’s Secret was released on NBC. It was an era t ripe with primetime lineups that included movie-of-the-week programming and specific networks promoting a “very special episode” of the latest hit TV show.
There are scenes from Kate’s Secret that remained burned into my psyche. I vividly remember watching the movie on TV and asking myself, “Why did the mom from Family Ties just eat a bunch of cookies in a grocery store and then barf it all up in the back?” As a young child, I was confused, but I also found it — dare I say — kind of funny. It wasn’t the bulimia I was laughing at — it was the way in which it was being portrayed.
There is an urgent sincerity when it comes to TV movies like Kate’s Secret. The serious issue is glazed over with a melodramatic brush and dipped into a heightened reality. It becomes something that many might call “camp”.
It’s devastating to watch Meredith Baxter as Kate tear through all the leftover food at a birthday party like a feral animal, only to regurgitate it immediately after. Sadly, this exists in real life, but Kate’s Secret is not real life — and Maddie’s Secret leans on that ever so politely.
If you have followed John Early since the days of his reenactment of Showgirls with his partner in crime, Kate Berlant, Maddie’s Secret makes perfect sense as the next step in his career. I don’t know why. It just does.
Kate’s Secret walked so Maddie’s Secret could run.
Coming from a comedy universe where Amy Sedaris and Cole Escola reign supreme, Early has proved he’s not just about doing hip thrusts as Nomi Malone. He’s always been about navigating the intersection of reverence, parody, satire, and camp. That’s not an easy thing to do.
He starred in Theda Hammel’s COVID quarantine comedy Stress Positions, which premiered at Sundance in 2024. He and Da’Vine Joy Randolph were a pair of scene stealers in David Feryne’s awards bait afterlife dramedy, Eternity.
Early appeared as a skeptical, high-strung TV writer in the return of The Comeback, while Search Party will always remain one of his greatest hits. But it’s Early’s feature directorial debut that gives us a brilliant introduction to his cinematic language.
If it seems like Maddie’s Secret could be a cousin of a John Waters film, it is. In an interview with Time, Early said he felt “an equal desire to be both John Waters and Divine.” So that’s exactly what he did. He became his own John Waters and Divine.
His portrayal of the titular Maddie could be compared to Divine’s roles in Waters’s iconic films. Divine may have been in drag, but she always committed to the role. Whether she was playing a frustrated and underappreciated mother in Polyester or an overbearing and cynical mother in Hairspray, she never once strayed from embodying the role of the woman she was playing.
It’s the same with Early’s portrayal of Maddie. He’s talked about this ad nauseam in interviews, but Early approached the role as if he were playing a woman, not a man in drag (even though he tucked and everything).
To label Maddie’s Secret as a silly piece of cinema is partially right. Kate Berlant’s performance as Deena, a lesbian with a crush on Maddie, is both hilarious and earnest, while Kristen Johnston, with the brief screen time she has, delivers a spectacular Mommie Dearest performance as Maddie’s toxic mother, Beverlee.
In this wonderful conversation, Meredith Baxter and John Early in Interview Magazine, it is clear that Maddie’s Secret is coming from a place of love. As much as some would want this to be a high-falootin’ homosexual comedy romp featuring John Early in drag, the film has a wholesome nature to it. You walk away thinking, “As absurd as that was at times, I actually think I came out of it a better person!”
Maddie’s Secret is not meant to skewer the sensitive subject of eating disorders. It pays homage to an era of what was referred to as a “woman’s movie” with directors like Douglas Sirk leading the charge in the genre.
With movie titles like Magnificent Obsession and A Time to Love and a Time to Die, Sirk’s films were the embodiment of a “woman’s movie,” which overdramatized stereotypical “women’s troubles” in domestic life. This genre dates back all the way to the silent era, up until the 1950s.
Sirk’s movies were a touchstone for John Waters’s Polyester, which, by the transitive property, is an influence for Maddie’s Secret.
Early’s performance also pays tribute to amazing actors like trailblazer Meredith Baxter, who starred in female-fronted TV movies of the ‘80s and ‘90s like Kate’s Secret. Although comedically melodramatic, these movies of the week remain a formidable benchmark in Hollywood’s evolution of storytelling about women and for women.
The nostalgia of Maddie’s Secret is perhaps its strongest asset. The film transported me back to a time in high school when my gal pals, I, and other closeted gay guy friends would have watch parties for Kate’s Secret. It reminded me of amazing actresses who helped raise Gen Xers and millennials. It made me laugh… it made me cry… at times, it gave me a scare! (When Maddie was overdoing it in the dancing studio, I was so concerned!)
With Maddie’s Secret, Early continues the tradition of absurd cinema that we desperately need right now. Like John Waters, Early takes an ordinary world with everyday people and plays with the dials to alter its reality enough to make it silly yet sensitive; heightened yet heartwarming; and most of all, stupid, but fun.
