The Housemaid author Freida McFadden unmasks her real identity
For years, the biggest mystery around The Housemaid novelist Freida McFadden wasn’t found in the pages of her psychological thrillers, it was her secret identity.
Best-selling author Freida McFadden has published more than 30 books including The Housemaid, but the greatest mystery has remained her identity.
McFadden has always said she writes under pseudonym, and in her public appearances, she wears a wig and a distinct glasses.
That veil has been lifted, with McFadden today revealing her real name is Sara Cohen. She told USA Today that she is a doctor who treats brain disorders and that she had concocted the public persona to keep her privacy.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.“My whole goal was to keep it a secret until I was (ready) to step back from my doctor job, so it wouldn’t be like everyone I work with suddenly knew and it compromised my ability to do my job.”
Cohen said she stopped working full time as a doctor three years ago and now only does it once or twice a month.
Given how prolific Cohen/McFadden has been, surely something was going to have to give on her schedule. “I just realised I was completely overwhelmed from trying to do both,” she said.
Known her psychological thrillers, she published her first book, The Devil Wears Scrubs, in 2013 and has four books in the Housemaid series among the dozens of tomes.
The Housemaid was adapted by director Paul Feig into a wildly successful movie starring Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney, grossing almost $US400 million from a production budget of $US35 million. A sequel was quickly greenlit with Sweeney expected to return.
Five of Cohen/McFadden’s other books also have screen adaptations in the works – The Tenant (at Amazon MGM), Dear Debbie (Amazon MGM), The Teacher (Apple TV), Never Lie (Netflix) and The Surrogate Mother (Sony Pictures).
She added, “Even though I haven’t told my real name until now, I feel like I have shared the real me all along and everything I’ve told them has been the truth. Even though the name will be a surprise, nothing else will. I’ve always been genuine with my readers.”
Among those details have been that she has two children, studied at Harvard and worked in the medical field. The wig is indeed a wig, and Cohen/McFadden said it’s because she doesn’t know how to style her hair – naturally curly – for events, and she does need glasses but the ones she wears in real life are different.
“I’m at a point in my career when I’m tired of this being a secret. I’m tired of people debating if I’m a real person or if I’m three men. I am a real person, and I have a real identity, and I don’t have anything to hide.”
McFadden’s decision to write under a pen name is hardly new, and while she didn’t have anything to hide, many of her predecessors did – specifically, their gender.
Women who wrote under a different name, either a male name or gender-neutral initials were common given the many biases in the publishing industry and even among readers against female authors and female-centric stories.
Mary Ann Evans was better known as George Eliot, who published her first novel, Scenes of Clerical Life, in 1857 before her magnum opus, Middlemarch.
Elizabeth Gaskell (North and South) first published under the name Cotton Mather Mills, and George Sand was really Amandine Lucie Aurore Dupin. The Bronte sisters published a volume of poetry together in 1846 under the pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.
S.E. Hinton (The Outsiders) was really Susan Eloise Hinton, while Miles Franklin dropped her first name, Stella, from My Brilliant Career.
Erika Mitchell wrote the 50 Shades books under E.L. James because, traditionally, erotica has been something hidden in a backroom. The 50 Shades books also had their origins as Twilight fan fiction and it’s not unusual for fan fiction writers to use a pen name.
Other writers who have established profiles sometimes choose to publish different names when the material diverges from their known styles.
Louisa May Alcott wrote A.M. Barnard when she penned the more sensational stories of Behind a Mask and The Abott’s Ghost, and J.K. Rowling, now a controversial figure thanks to her transphobic position, used the moniker Robert Galbraith for her adult crime novels.
Stephen King sometimes released books under the name Richard Bachman to get around conventional wisdom that authors should only release one book a year. He published the first Bachman book in 1977 and was “outed” in 1985 when a bookshop worker noticed the similarities between King and his alter ego.
