![]() (Matafeo is Samoan on her father’s side.) The show, Horndog, dives headfirst into her teenage obsessions with everything from K-pop to her well-documented lust for Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand-that obsessive, passionate love that’s the hallmark of teenage girlhood. In 2018, Matafeo won the prestigious comedy award for best show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, making her the first person of color to do so for a solo show. You could say it’s worked out pretty well. “The years where I could have gotten an actual skill or, like, a degree or anything like that sort of flew by, and then I arrived to my late 20s going, Well, I’m committed to this now, so I should try and make it work.” She stuck with the discipline through her teens and “accidentally kept doing it” in her 20s, touring in New Zealand and Australia before landing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. A self-described nerd who never played sports, the New Zealand native discovered she liked comedy at the age of 15, choosing to spend her two-week school vacation taking comedy classes. Matafeo has never had trouble forming an opinion. “I don’t want to fucking see Ramona without her mask again. That’s the fucking thing,” says Matafeo, before going on a comedic tear about what she does and does not want to see on the infamous gossip Instagram. That day they’d been shooting in a London park and drawing some interested onlookers. ![]() “They’re announcing it properly next week, but I obviously already just posted a photo on Instagram,” she says. Matafeo’s lying down because she’s just finished a long day of shooting the second season of Starstruck, which was renewed by HBO Max before it even debuted on the streaming platform. The series currently has 100% critic and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes, with Vanity Fair’s Cassie da Costa praising its “elusive, ineffable charm.” And much like that movie, Matafeo’s show has critics swooning. In short, Starstruck is an inverse Notting Hill-this time, famous man falls for everyday girl. In the series, which she cowrote with best friend Alice Snedden, Matafeo plays Jessie-a floundering 28-year-old movie house employee spinning her wheels in London who has a one-night stand with Tom, a Tom Cruise–esque action-film star played by British Indian actor Nikesh Patel. Matafeo’s effortlessly curly hair becomes something of a signature look on Starstruck, the six-part BBC romantic comedy series she created and starred in. “You like this crazy angle?” she says breezily in her Auckland accent, the screen flooded with her impressively bouncy curls. Rose Matafeo is in her bed in London when she answers my Zoom call.
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