Some of Rose Matafeo’s Christmas traditions might sound slightly odd to non-Antipodean ears. The 32-year-old comedian grew up in Auckland: her father is Samoan, her mother Scottish-Croatian. “Because my parents are Rastafarian, and I was brought up Rastafarian, it was seen as a bit of a pagan ritual, as my dad would say,” she recalls. “So we never had a Christmas tree. And on the day, as kids, we would go to the $2 shop, which is quite a famous shop in New Zealand, and we’d all buy each other a $2 gift. And mum would get each of us kids a big packet of crisps, a 2.25-litre bottle of fizzy drink and some sweets. That was kind of Christmas.”
That sounds… sort of brilliant? “When you’re a kid that’s the jackpot,” she nods. “You’re like, ‘My own personal crappy food! That I don’t have to share with my brothers at all!’ It’s crazy.”
Were games a feature of the Kiwi Christmas? “There was a tradition where we had a lolly man, which would usually be my uncle in a trenchcoat with lots of bags of sweets tied to him,” Matafeo replies. “And he’d run as fast as he could, and all of the children would run after him and rip off the bags of lollies.”
Matafeo glances over and catches my confused expression. “You look back on your childhood, and you’re like, ‘That seemed completely normal to me.’ I Googled it the other day, and I’m like, ‘There’s no record of this.’”
As much as the lolly man was a formative part of her upbringing, Matafeo thinks she might prefer Christmas on this side of the world. She came to the UK in her early 20s and her smart, oversharing standup routines soon blew up: in 2018, aged 26, her show Horndog won the Edinburgh best comedy show award. She followed that in 2021 by creating and starring in the HBO/BBC romcom Starstruck, opposite Nikesh Patel, which over three seasons became a global smash hit, broadcast in almost 100 countries. Matafeo has also rubber-stamped her connection to the UK, receiving indefinite leave to remain last year.
Alongside that, Matafeo has become a regular on comedy shows, notably being a memorably offbeat contestant on the ninth series of the cult, homespun Channel 4 gameshow Taskmaster, where comedians are set improbable challenges and judged on their efforts. And this year, she was anointed Junior Taskmaster, presenting the spin-off edition for children aged nine to 11. The series concludes on Christmas Eve and one precocious tween will walk away with a lifesize golden head that faintly resembles Matafeo.
Games – the sillier the better – have always been part of Matafeo’s life. In New Zealand, her family would play charades, Bananagrams and the Star Wars-themed version of Monopoly. “So I don’t understand normal Monopoly,” she says. “I’ll land on a property and be like, ‘No, that’s Dagobah.’”
Playing with two elder brothers, Matafeo became a stickler for observing rules (and also secretly quite competitive, she now accepts). “One of the main memories of my childhood is 10 years of listening to my two brothers not fight, but just have hours-long arguments – quite calm, almost like lawyers, little lawyers. It was just so boring, but then it turned me into not a total pedant, but a real rule-follower.”
When she moved to London, Matafeo’s tastes in games diversified into escape rooms, social games such as Werewolf (which found its way into an episode of Starstruck) and, the big one, pub quizzes. “I love a pub quiz,” she says, eyes wide. “People take them so seriously here. But there’s one pub quiz we found on a Sunday, and I will not be naming it, because we win it quite often. It’s the first time in my life where we’ve found the right mix of people, actually our age. Because when you walk into a pub quiz and see that table of old geezers, not smiling or talking to one another, you know you’re absolutely screwed.”
Agreeing to appear on Taskmaster as a contestant was, therefore, a very quick yes for Matafeo: the experience was a heightened version of the adrenaline spike she found in escape rooms. “Every morning I’d wake up when it was a Taskmaster shoot day, I felt like that excitement I had as a kid on Christmas Day,” she says.
Matafeo’s favourite tasks were the weirder creative ones, such as when the contestants were asked to write lyrics and perform the Taskmaster theme tune. “It was terrifying, but it was one of the best things I ever did,” she says. “Also I look back on those episodes and it was pre-Covid, I’m 26, 27, I’m very, very energetic. I’m 32 now, and I’m like, ‘Wow, to be young, to be a young pup doing Taskmaster.’”
If Matafeo is feeling her age, it might have something to do with her prepubescent colleagues on Junior Taskmaster. Did she have any hesitation when she was picked along with comedian (and fellow Taskmaster alum) Mike Wozniak to front the new show? “I’m the daughter of a teacher, and I don’t have kids myself, so I’ve still got some interest in them,” says Matafeo. “Mike’s got kids, wonderful kids, but I think he’s got a different approach to kids than I do. I’m like: ‘Oh, fascinating!’ He’s more like: ‘Here we go again…’”
Matafeo’s main fear before shooting was that her judgments would make the children cry, but that concern didn’t last long. “We had a pilot and one thing we learned was: show no hesitation in doling out points. I was very worried. I felt bad. I felt guilt. That very quickly melted away after five consecutive days with children. By the end it was just like: ‘One point!’ Absolutely didn’t care.”
Perhaps unexpectedly, Matafeo now finds herself with a youthful fanbase. This has been bolstered by her performance in Moana 2, now in cinemas, as the voice of Loto, a sassy teenage inventor who is part of Moana’s wayfinding crew. “Teenage girl,” she scoffs, “I’m twice her age.” But being part of the production – which was originally supposed to be a Disney+ TV series – has been a proud moment for Matafeo. “I’m half Samoan and it’s so strange to see your culture represented in such a mainstream film. That first film, the success of it, felt surreal and was an amazing cultural shift.”
After a hectic year – she also returned to standup with the show On and On and On – Matafeo is hoping for a relatively sedate Christmas in London this year. The night before we meet, she got together with a handful of Kiwi friends for a planning session. “We got the spreadsheet out and my friend Alice started the meeting by asking everyone to give us one word of what we want our Christmas to be.”
What was Matafeo’s word? “My word was actually a sentence, which was: ‘At times silent.’ Everyone was saying ‘merry’ or ‘joyful’ – quite wonderful, exciting words. Then, because we’re having it at my house, my contribution was: ‘Sometimes I’ll just leave for an hour.’ And that’s fine, and that should be accepted.”
Where will the lolly man be? Matafeo smiles, “Outside, freezing their arse off.”
