This article covers a developing story. Continue to check back with us as we will be adding more information as it becomes available.
The Housemaid author Frieda McFadden has stepped out of the shadows.
McFadden has revealed her true identity and has confirmed her day job as a brain doctor following the major success of her popular thriller book and its subsequent film adaptation. Released in 2022, the psychological thriller novel became a bestseller, leading to an adaptation led by Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried in 2025. The Housemaid was a massive box office success.
Now, USA Today has broken the news of McFadden revealing her true identity. The Housemaid author’s real name is Sara Cohen, who works as a brain doctor treating brain disorders. Cohen kept her identity a secret from the public to ensure her writing didn’t clash with her work. She quit working full-time in late 2023, but still sees some patients.
Cohen, who earned her degree at Harvard University, revealed that her coworkers eventually discovered her identity as McFadden, all keeping it a secret as she continued to write. According to the report, she began to bring her books to the hospital, realizing that “I was completely overwhelmed from trying to do both” jobs at the same time.
Cohen has been writing under the McFadden name since 2013, when she published her first book in the Dr. Jane McGill series, titled The Devil Wears Scrubs. The book draws from her personal medical experience as an intern, and marked the first of the many books she would publish after the fact. This includes The Housemaid in 2022.
The best-selling book became the first in a series, with Cohen later publishing two sequels and a short story to go alongside it. The movie adaptation of the first book ended up becoming a box office hit, earning $399.1 million against a $35 million budget. Reviews for The Housemaid were also rather positive, earning a Certified Fresh 73% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes.
This led to the announcement of a sequel to The Housemaid, which will be based on Cohen’s second book in the series, The Housemaid’s Secret. It will arrive on December 17, 2027 and feature Kirsten Dunst as a prominent character. This level of success for Cohen’s work has led to now, with her revealing her true identity to the public as she continues to write.
More to come…
