Comedian John Early makes his feature directing debut with the tonally wild dark comedy “Maddie’s Secret,” a hit out of 2025’s Toronto International Film Festival and soon headed to theaters from Magnolia Pictures. Watch the trailer below.

Best known for his comic collaborations with Kate Berlant and for series like “Search Party” and “The Afterparty” and starring roles in films like “Stress Positions,” Early writes, directs, and stars in “Maddie’s Secret.” Here, he plays a woman named Maddie — earnestly, and not as drag — a dishwasher who becomes a viral internet superstar while working for food content creation company Gourmaybe.

She has a loving husband (Eric Rahill) and a devoted lesbian best friend (Berlant), but pressures at the new job threaten to reveal a secret from Maddie’s past that will threaten her career. A satirical melodrama, a movie-of-the-week homage, an intimate drama, and a woundingly dark comedy, “Maddie’s Secret” is many things, including one of the year’s most exciting debuts.

More from IndieWire’s review: “Even when it is not strictly funny, the dialogue is written and performed with the kind of hyper-expressive broadness that defines the after-school specials which inspired it. But what is most immediately striking about the film is its straightforward sincerity. Early never makes fun of Maddie, never lets the audience snicker at the screen. There is a mean version of this project, the one I imagined walking in — a satire of wellness culture and feminine self-image that is brutal and shocking, with a higher joke density. But ‘Maddie’s Secret’ is a different and more tender thing.”

IndieWire also spoke to Early out of Toronto last year, who said he learned a lot about directing in his first go-round. “The biggest thing I learned was just the only way for me, I’m not Terrence Malick. I can’t like be, ‘Let’s fucking roam around and get beautiful shots.’ I really was like, ‘The only way is preparation and coming in with a plan.’ Especially at the budget level we were working, if you didn’t have a plan, it all fell apart. I’m very proud of its visual directness, and I say this with love, the dumbness. There were moments where we were trying to do more elevated camera work. And then I was like, ‘I’m sorry. It’s just going to be her POV. And I’m going to make the actors look directly into the camera. I’m sorry.’”

“Maddie’s Secret” arrives in theaters starting June 19 at IFC Center and June 26 in Los Angeles. Check out its first trailer below.