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

In his directorial debut Maddie’s Secret, Early plays a food influencer with bulimia in a wild flip on the modern melodramaThey don’t make film heroines quite like Maddie Ralph any more. As the creation of comedian and actor , 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 than the han...