Bestselling Thriller Author Freida McFadden Reveals Real Identity as Brain Disorder Physician
The secret is out.
After years of hiding behind a pen name, the author of best-selling novels like The Housemaid and The Boyfriend, has revealed her true identity. Freida McFadden is actually Sara Cohen, a doctor who specializes in treating brain disorders.
Freida McFadden opens up about her double life as a doctor and best-selling author
Why did McFadden reveal her real name now?
“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,” she said an exclusive interview with USA Today. “I am a real person and I have a real identity and I don’t have anything to hide.”
McFadden explained that she created her pseudonym when she first started publishing her domestic thrillers because she wanted a separation between her writing life and her medical career. While she’s shown her face in public, she uses a wig and glasses to change her appearance.
“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,” she said.
McFadden’s savvy coworkers eventually discovered her alternate identity, though they kept her secret under wraps. Now that she’s working as a doctor just a few days per month, she says she’s done hiding. But unmasking herself won’t change her stories, she assured fans.
“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,” McFadden said. “Even though the name will be a surprise, nothing else will. I’ve always been genuine with my readers.”
A sequel to ‘The Housemaid’ with Sydney Sweeney is in the works
McFadden’s true identity has been cause for speculation ever since her page-turning books starting flying off the shelves. (She penned three of 2025’s top 20 bestselling books, according to Publisher’s Weekly.) Interest in her real name only increased following last year’s success of the film adaptation of The Housemaid, which starred Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried. A sequel is in the works.
McFadden is hardly the first well-known author to hide their identity. Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Agatha Christie have all published books under different names, often when they wanted to write in another genre. When J.K. Rowling ventured into adult fiction, she wrote under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, though it didn’t take long for people to discover that the author of The Casual Vacancy had also written the Harry Potter series.
In the 1990s, Primary Colors, a juicy, lightly-fictionalized tale based on Bill Clinton’s primary campaign for president, was a major hit. In a savvy marketing move, the author was credited as “Anonymous.” Eventually, Time magazine columnist Joe Klein was outed as the man behind the book.
More recently, people have wondered about the real identity of acclaimed Italian author Elena Ferrante. The author of My Brilliant Friend and other novels has said she kept her true name hidden for various reasons, including to protect her privacy and that of the community where most of her books take place.
Ferrante told The Guardian that she adopted her pseudonym because of a “wish to remove oneself from all forms of social pressure or obligation. Not to feel tied down to what could become one’s public image. To concentrate exclusively and with complete freedom on writing and its strategies.”
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