“Aloof, mysterious and totally chill.” That’s how Rose Matafeo would have me describe the fundamental facets of her character. It’s unconventional, yes, but somehow we’re jointly workshopping opening lines for this interview. “And then something about how I held a lot back, and was impossible to read – a totally closed book,” the 31-year-old New-Zealand-born comic suggests, momentarily straight-faced, before bursting into another round of rich belly laughter. It’s a Thursday in July and we’re perched on stools outside a cafe in an east London park, deep into our third cumulative hour of discussions.
Barely two weeks earlier, we had spent most of a sunny afternoon talking over a swanky central London lunch. From the best goodie bags she’s received from recent TV chatshow appearances (The Kelly Clarkson Show: cookies, candles and a Clarkson-branded travel mug) to various iterations of existential dread (where is home? What is fulfilment? How to thrive with Eeyore as your personality type?), the breadth of ground covered felt extensive. Then, out of the blue, Matafeo suggested we meet again. Now, in a floral dress and sunglasses, she’s prodding at a brie and pear baguette, trying to articulate precisely why she wanted to continue the conversation.
“A few things have happened since then,” she begins to explain. “I actually just got my indefinite leave to remain visa through, which means I can’t really get kicked out of the UK any more. It’s like the start of a new chapter. And I’ve done my first few work-in-progress shows for my new hour of standup, which I was nervous about when we met. But actually, well, something happened.”
Right after our leisurely lunch the other week, Matafeo recalls, she had been whisked off to another tête-à-tête with another UK newspaper during a chock-a-block day of promotion for the third season of her BBC/HBO romcom Starstruck, on screen this September. The interviewer brought up Junior Taskmaster, a kids’ adaptation of the endlessly popular Channel 4 show Matafeo is slated to host. “And he asked: ‘Does it bring out the mother in you?’ I tried to palm it off as a joke – ‘Whose mother is in me?!’ – but he pushed it hard. I went to the bathroom and found myself at the sink, seething.” During our lunch, she’d just spoken extensively about turning 30 and how society struggles to categorise a woman uncertain about wanting kids as anything but “totally miserable” or “making a political statement”. So when it came to her broadsheet interviewer, “I went back and asked if he’d ask the same question to a man. It just felt so obviously gendered.
“Anyway,” Matafeo continues, “I then got into my own head in that classic overthinking way.” Hence her wanting to meet with me for a follow-up. What’s on her mind? “That I said too much to you, or not enough. And, well, maybe through Starstruck I’ve added to the canon of a genre that I do have a lot of respect for but I think is maybe bad? One that’s limiting for women in its presentation of romantic love and fulfilment.”
The romcom has played a central role in shaping Matafeo’s career to date. It was the subject of her 2017 standup show Sassy Best Friend, and while Starstruck certainly explores fresh themes in its third season, the original conceit was firmly of the genre. In classic screwball comedy style, the first series kicks off with protagonist cinema staffer Jessie, played by Matafeo, discovering her one-night stand (played by Nikesh Patel) was a major movie star. But six years after its creator started to write Starstruck, it seems her sensibilities have shifted.
“Now I’ve got so many conflicting feelings about love, relationships and romantic ideals,” she says. “As I’m getting older I’m asking: why did I feel through my 20s that finding romantic love and settling down was such a motivation in life? Maybe I don’t want to be adding to that pressure and expectation of romantic love being the be all and end all,” she adds. “Maybe I want to encourage younger women like myself to aspire to other things.”
At the end of season two, we left Jessie and Tom snogging in the mucky park pond we’re now looking out at. “We were in there for a full day,” Matafeo says. “Honestly, it was awful. They tested for disease – that little island in the middle has so many rats on it. At one point I got a bit of the water in my mouth. It was disgusting.” The opening montage of the third season, however, sees the relationship sour. Soon they’ve split: Tom finds a new love interest; Jessie’s attempt to move on (by copping off with a stranger at a wedding) is interrupted when the exes cross paths again. Suffice to say, things get complicated.
After 10 years of spent in and out of relationships, Matafeo is now coming to unexpected realisations. “I’m noticing that periods when I’m single, even though the world tells you that it’s the worst and most desperate time, are actually the most creatively fulfilling. It’s leading to an ‘aha moment’ – being comfortable and happy with the idea of being single. So maybe I feel a massive sense of guilt for making a romcom, and this second interview is just me looking to alleviate it.” She stops for a minute. “As previously mentioned, I’m an aloof closed book.” She breaks out laughing.
Finding humour in exploring her anxieties and vulnerability has long been Matafeo’s career mainstay. Having started comedy aged 15 back in Auckland, New Zealand, she moved to London aged 23 and built a reputation on the circuit quickly. Her third foray into the Edinburgh fringe in 2018 saw her standup set Horndog bag the prestigious best comedy show award. Then the idea for Starstruck began to swirl around. Each season has been co-written by Matafeo and her best friend Alice Snedden, while season three also sees the pair take on the task of directing. To date, Starstruck has been broadcast in 96 countries, with more to come. Critical praise was matched with award nods: there was a Bafta nomination for Matafeo’s performance, plus a host of others, and inclusion on countless must-watch lists.
“I planned to take some time off after season two,” she says. “I tried to find myself, I think.” How did that go? “Terribly. I got bored. I’m no good at holidays. So I wrote and directed a sketch pilot for Channel 4 which didn’t get picked up. Plus I was promoting Starstruck in the US.” It doesn’t sound, I suggest, like a period of rest and relaxation. “It meant I wasn’t even sure I could do a third series,” she says. “I was adamantly against it at first. I couldn’t see what the story would be. And I wasn’t sure I had enough gas in the tank.”
After retreating into a writers’ room for a few weeks with Snedden and Kiwi co-writer Nic Sampson, they found fresh, fertile territory. “Season one was the romcom, and season two explored what happens after that fairytale romcom ending. The third one,” Matafeo says, “turned into: ‘What’s it like to have an ex?’ It’s definitely something I wouldn’t have been able to write in my mid-20s.” Having previously dated other performers, she is not surprised that people want to know how many of these storylines are mined from personal experience. “And yes,” she says, “I can see how it looks, because I’m in it. But it’s really not hugely referential to my life. I probably should have worn a wig or done an accent, blurred things a little.”
Simultaneously writing, directing and starring in a show was a major undertaking. “It was great,” she makes clear. “I never regretted it. But every day there was something new to grapple with. I’d be in the makeup trailer before everyone else, then doing three jobs at once all day and on set until the end.” Back in late February, I’d visited filming for season three in a north London pub. Just watching Matafeo in action was exhausting. From the director’s chair she would oversee each scene; once the cameras started to roll she’d act and direct on set simultaneously, a portable monitor to check every shot constantly accessible.
When we spoke, she was wired, yes, but seemingly in her element. “I think I experienced some level of physical burnout afterwards,” she says. “My body went kaput: I felt like I had something stuck in my ribs for the next two months. I [felt like] electrical shocks through my body. There was hyperventilation and heart rate stuff. My body went crazy. It’s amazing to have done all those jobs but I’m not sure I could do it again.”
That’s not to say she is booking a beach break quite yet. For the second half of this month’s Edinburgh fringe, Matafeo will perform a work-in-progress hour of comedy. The run sold out almost immediately with no promo, despite an 11.20am start. Our first meeting is before any preview shows, and Matafeo is concerned that audiences coming to see “Matafeo: TV star” may not expect her brand of deeply personal comedy. “I’m worried people will think they’re going to see someone from a panel show, and will instead get …” she gestures up and down at herself, “a chick going through some stuff from 12 pages of notes written during a really shitty three months.”
She tries, for a while, to pivot to lighter talking points. But despite Matafeo’s best efforts to chat about dream yoga (“It’s going into your dreams with intention, controlling them”) and grappling not with imposter syndrome but more person-who-accidentally-walked-into-shot syndrome, by the time she’s finishing her iced coffee, we’re firmly back with the weighty.
Writing her first full hour of standup since 2018 has thrown up some confronting questions. “Any situation where you tie up a lot of your sense of self-worth in the work you make can fuck you up,” she says. “Especially when it’s a reflection of your thoughts, feelings and personality, even if slightly curated.” Standup comedy done her way, Matafeo says, is to tie a piece of your being and personality into something you give away. “Big shit – big feelings – is what I care about and want to write about. Making work has definitely done something to me. I started so young – at a time when I was still figuring out who I was. It fucks you in the head a bit. Still, I keep going back to it.”
There is, however, a sense from Matafeo that a more settled relationship with her work is developing. “I’m so happy with the third season of Starstruck,” she says. “For the first series, I was worried about how people would react – to me, the show, the script. The response was good; it made me feel worthy. But I’ve worked out how dangerous that is. Season three is great because I think it is, and that’s all that matters. Did that sound convincing?”
Rose Matafeo is at Monkey Barrel 4, Edinburgh, 17 to 27 August. Series three of Starstruck is coming soon to BBC Three and BBC One.
