SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Maddie is passionate about food. She's a talented home chef and working her way up the food chain, if you please, as a dishwasher in the Gourmaybe magazine test kitchens. One night at home, she makes a Filipino eggplant omelet for her husband, Jake, who posts it online. And by the time she gets to work the next morning...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "MADDIE'S SECRET")
KATE BERLANT: (As Deena) Six hundred thousand views.
JOHN EARLY: (As Maddie Ralph) What do you mean?
BERLANT: (As Deena) Six hundred thousand people and a few bots shared the video you posted last night.
EARLY: (As Maddie Ralph) I don't believe you. You're crazy.
BERLANT: (As Deena) I'm not crazy. That's a six followed by five zeros.
SIMON: But the stress of competing for food influencer stardom rekindles Maddie's eating disorder. "Maddie's Secret" is the debut film from John Early, the comedian and actor, who stars as Maddie along with Kate Berlant, Eric Rahill and Chris Bauer. John Early joins us from our studios in New York. Thanks so much for being with us.
EARLY: Hi, Scott. This is a thrill.
SIMON: Well, it's a thrill for us. Maddie is acclaimed as perfect by so many of her coworkers.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "MADDIE'S SECRET")
BERLANT: (As Deena) Hey, Maddie. Don't you ever get tired of being such a good girl?
EARLY: (As Maddie Ralph) No.
SIMON: What do the first stirrings of success do to her?
EARLY: I think she's a very reluctant celebrity, micro celebrity. I genuinely believe that Maddie is very pure of heart. And I think she fears the spotlight for all sorts of good reasons. But it does, unfortunately, reawaken an adolescent struggle with an eating disorder.
SIMON: Yeah. And maybe we should say it's bulimia and...
EARLY: Yes.
SIMON: ...Especially difficult to bear, I should think, for someone who becomes a chef. But is the social pressure from having influence - online, algorithms, posts, all of that. Is that also a kind of trigger for Maddie?
EARLY: Yeah. I think, to me, Maddie is like a classic ingenue, the kind that doesn't exist anymore, almost like a Sandra Dee or a Pollyanna. And I think she's just not built for the world of today. I think she, you know, like me, honestly, is just, like, scared of the kind of perversity of the algorithm and what it will do to her.
SIMON: You mentioned that Maddie's an ingenue type.
EARLY: Yeah.
SIMON: Why did you decide to play her and not cast an actress?
EARLY: (Laughter) It's a really good question. You should talk to my analyst...
SIMON: (Laughter).
EARLY: ...'Cause I sure as hell don't know.
SIMON: Well, they, you know, patient-interviewee relationship.
EARLY: Yes. No. Exactly. Exactly. There was never a world in which I wasn't going to play her. I have to say, I didn't write this movie and then suddenly go, oh, I should play Maddie. Like all the stuff I make, it starts as a kind of vague performance instinct. I was kind of making myself laugh at home, talking in this kind of chirpy, bright, optimistic way. And then I suddenly felt very compelled to do that for 90 minutes, as opposed to just four seconds. And I thought something very compelling might happen, something maybe a little mysterious might happen if I committed to that and if I really, really did it.
SIMON: I mean, I have to persist just a little. What if Natalie Portman had let it be known she wanted to play Maddie?
EARLY: I would say Natalie, no.
(LAUGHTER)
EARLY: I would tell her - I would say, unfortunately, no. It has to be me. Divine is one of my biggest heroes, and Charles Busch is one of my biggest heroes. These people who, for whatever reason, grew up loving women in film and wanted to see what would happen if they themselves donned the wig.
SIMON: How did you find just that right touch often between satire and utter sincerity?
EARLY: You know, it's kind of mysterious to me. I have to say, when I was writing it, I set out to make something more satirical than it ended up being. I was imagining something maybe a little more early John Waters, kind of brash and rude and, you know, full of biting cultural commentary. And then, almost immediately, I just felt extremely protective over Maddie, and I was very moved by Maddie. And I realized that I was tapping into something very indirectly personal.
I mean, my life doesn't match hers at all. I'm not a woman. I don't suffer from bulimia. But there was something about this story, kind of archetypally, that did tap into something personal to me. So I just kind of - I felt the emotion coming. I felt the tenderness coming into the story and into the style. And I guess the thing I did was that I didn't do anything. I was like, this is tonally very wild, and I think I should just not be too delicate about this. I shouldn't overthink it. I should just commit.
SIMON: Tell us about the exercise class scene.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "MADDIE'S SECRET")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As exercise instructor) Five, six, seven, all. All right, let's get moving. Whoo.
BERLANT: (As Deena) Come on, Maddie.
EARLY: (As Maddie Ralph) I don't know the moves.
BERLANT: (As Deena) Your body does.
EARLY: You know, in these eating disorder TV movies, which is a kind of subgenre of television movie that haunted my adolescence, the ingenue, the lead woman has to kind of push herself to a physical extreme, and her body kind of gives out, and then she's forced into some sort of recovery. And one of the ways in which I thought I could bring this kind of older trope to a story that was set in contemporary life was by instead of Maddie just going to a gym or jogging, she goes to a queer dance class, which is - these are real things, you know, that I've come across living my incredibly narrow, coastal, millennial life. I thought it would be very, very funny to see this kind of, like, sweet, straight girl get led into this mysterious world of queerness and homosexuality.
SIMON: Yeah. I mean, it's an homage to "Showgirls."
EARLY: Absolutely. Absolutely - "Showgirls," "Flashdance." "Showgirls" is a huge influence on this movie, stylistically and kind of spiritually. You know, "Showgirls" is the movie that made me want to be a filmmaker. The expressiveness of that movie, the kind of careening quality of it. I - totally thrilled me when I first saw it.
SIMON: People you worked with in this film - Kate Berlant, Eric Rahill - you know them. You've worked with them. What's that collaboration like?
EARLY: The ethos of this movie almost existed before there was any sort of narrative. I really wanted to make a movie with my friends, and I wanted the movie to have a sort of, like, almost the spirit of a sleepover - you know, like, a let's choreograph a dance quality. So I made sure that we could work at a budget level where the financiers would let me hire my friends, and it was just a total thrill. I mean, I don't know how I could have written - I mean, these characters are very archetypal, but they're totally tailored to my friends.
SIMON: As we noted, it's your debut film. What kind of films do you want to go on to make?
EARLY: Well, frankly (laughter), my dream is to make, like, three Maddie movies. You know, I see her as this...
SIMON: I'm glad this wasn't the last we've seen of Maddie.
EARLY: Yay. Yeah.
SIMON: She's quite appealing.
EARLY: To me, she's, like, kind of a "Little House On The Prairie," like, or "Anne Of Green Gables." I have two other movies in my head outlined. And if the listeners at home could send me a check, I can make a couple more. But no, I love working in this kind of, like, melodrama style, and I want to keep going with it.
SIMON: John Early - he's directed and stars in the new film "Maddie's Secret" in theaters now. Thank you so much for being with us.
EARLY: Thank you so much for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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