As far as book to screen adaptations go, Paul Feig's The Housemaid was a massive hit. Screenings had people yelling in theaters, and the 2025 mystery film made a whopping $398 million on a reported budget of $35 million, with tons of folks heading to theaters to see Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney face off. The film is now streaming, and I went back to re-watch it and clocked a cameo that was confirmed by Feig to CinemaBlend months ago.
The Housemaid crushed at the box office, and now the movie is streamable for those with a STARZ subscription. As you can see in the video above, I had the chance to speak with Paul Feig ahead of its release, where I asked about a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo by the filmmaker himself. He confirmed I caught it, telling me:
I don't do all the time right, because it you know, as a director it's really hard to then step in front of the camera and be an actor when you are telling all the other actors what to do. Because then I can always imagine they're going like, 'Well he's not very good, so why am I listening to him ?' That one is from the very first movie I did called [I Am David] that I directed, but I had a bigger role in that. And so we had a TV sequence. I thought, 'Oh, let's put a clip in there. That'll be be my cameo. I already shot it once.'
Feig spoke about the challenges of The Housemaid, and that includes the slick way that he brought himself to the project. In the movie Sydney Sweeney is shown watching TV, which features footage of the director/actor in I Am David. It's a cute way that Feig got to appear in the project, where he was mostly the man behind the camera. And now fans can re-watch the film and pause it on that moment.
The Housemaid's ending left things open for more stories, which was a smart move considering that a sequel is already in development. Kirsten Dunst will join the burgeoning franchise in the follow-up film, and it should be fascinating to see how the story is expanded, and if its different than the second novel The Housemaid's Secret. We'll just have to wait and see if Feig manages to sneak in another cameo in that highly anticipated project.
The Housemaid is available to re-watch now on STARZ, which can also be bundled with a Hulu subscription. It's unclear when the sequel will arrive, but we probably shouldn't expect it to arrive on the 2026 release list. But at least the first one is now finally streamable, complete with Paul Feig's cameo.
