Rose Matafeo Breaks Down Her New Stand-Up Special—And What Didn’t Make the Cut

I’m listening intently as Rose Matafeo asks our server at London’s Soho Hotel for her recommendations on red wine, discussing which of the options are light and which are more full-bodied. Is Matafeo a wine connoisseur in the making? “God, no. I think you just have to be confident,” she says once she’s made her decision. “It’s an adult move when you start knowing how to order a drink,” she notes, adding that until you get there, you’re “just smiling and nodding, and not knowing what the f-ck everyone else is talking about.”

Matafeo and I met in November, a few days after she filmed two back-to-back comedy gigs in London, which have been edited into a special titled On And On And On, now streaming on Max. I attended the first of the two, which, she insists, “was, I’m gonna say it, bad. Most of that did not make the edit.” There wasn’t much she could have done about it. “I had laryngitis. I didn’t have a voice [earlier that week] and I was totally ‘roided up. I cried about seven times that day. I cried five minutes before I performed that show. I was panicking,” she confesses, relieved when I tell her that I didn’t pick up on any of that from the audience.

Matafeo, 32—who is best known for Starstruck, the series she co-wrote and starred in between 2021 and 2023—hails from New Zealand but moved to London in her 20s for “love.” (To be with her then-boyfriend, British comedian James Acaster.) Her outlook on relationships and the breakups she’s encountered along the way partly inspired her special. The crux of the show is formed on a “humble note” from the Notes application on her iPhone. Although, as Matafeo admits to the audience, at 16,000 words, it’s less of a note and more of a manifesto. For effect, Matafeo has printed it out and lays it out on the stage. Save for the first line, which reads, “I may have a lot of problems, but at least I have a heart,” she keeps the rest to herself, only paraphrasing that it contains ramblings and realizations brought on by the breakdown of a romantic relationship. She shares her feelings on love, breakups (harder in your 30s, as people are breaking up with the real you), growing older, and general life reflections that her fellow millennials will no doubt relate to.

The audience at her London shows got to see Matafeo self-edit and tweak her show in real time. “We’re keeping that in!” she would say after some jokes, relishing the laughter, while other parts had her saying, “That won’t make the cut.” One bit that ended up on the cutting room floor was related to Taylor Swift. Matafeo was discussing the integral role music can play when you’re getting over a breakup, and how suddenly every song relates to your situation. But despite her friends’ recommendations, she had no desire to listen to Swift. Matafeo explained that she doesn’t want to endanger her own life by speaking her truth (Swifties are known for their passionate defense of the singer), but went on to say, “music of that woman means absolutely nothing to me.”

I could feel the nervous laughter of the audience around me as Matafeo quipped that she didn’t feel safe proceeding with the routine, before continuing her commentary on the “adult Swifties” who attended the Eras Tour, swapping friendship bracelets and “dressing up like pencil cases from Claire’s Accessories.” When I ask whether she really planned to edit it out for fear of the wrath of fans, she says there were other factors at play. “It was too long, and also, I like that it’s something of an Easter egg for people who saw the show live. It was basically me talking sh-t, which is most of stand-up really. I think it’s best left for the live arena, but I’m glad I did it in the live shows.”

Matafeo shared further behind-the-scenes insight into the special before opening up about the art of sharing her life on stage while trying to maintain privacy, the power that comes from embracing big life decisions, and more.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

TIME: Despite the fact you were having a difficult day behind-the-scenes, you seemed confident when you came out on stage. After the set, as you returned to the stage to do extra filming bits and sit with the audience and riff, I noticed a shift. You were no longer as comfortable, and joked about the awkwardness. As a self-professed introvert, do you have to make a conscious shift of turning on the stand-up persona before stepping out to do a set?

Matafeo: That bit afterwards, when I had to come back out, that was the real me. It was so difficult because I’m sh-t at improvising in those moments. I get stage fright, in a way. Weirdly, a wash of relief came over me because I was like, “That’s [the stand-up] done now.” I felt a little bit more myself, and myself is nervous on stage, mumbling and talking about The Phantom of the Opera or something.

When you develop a show over time, you find your rhythm and build up this character. There is a mode you can go into when repeating a show over and over. It was the first time I’d done the show in that place, so looking out at the audience, you’re completely out on a limb. That was part of the terror of the show. There were very nice crowds, thankfully. When you do those shows, you want to lighten the crowd a little bit, but I could see people I knew. I don’t like talking to the crowd, so I just keep them in soft focus.

The kick-starting conversation for your special revolves around a note you wrote on your iPhone Notes app. You only read out the first line. But I wonder, is there anyone on the planet that would get full access to that note in its entirety, or even just your Notes app in general?

That’s such a good question. No, I don’t think there is. Even my closest, closest friends. I wouldn’t want them to see that. It’s like reading a diary. It’s weird, the idea of something so private existing on a device that literally anyone could get into. To be honest, the note is so f-cking long it barely makes sense. Some of it is so cringe-inducing. I stand by what I said in the show—that when you go back through your notes, it’s like a stranger has hacked into your phone and written some of the most bat-sh-t crazy things. You have to know it’s part of you, though. You can’t distance yourself from it, as we all contain multitudes.

You talk through a variety of topics in your special, from how it’s much harder to deal with being dumped in your 30s to how you turned to online relationship coaches at your lowest, or funny realizations about your high school years. Do you ever give the real-life people you talk about a heads-up ahead of time?

I don’t, because I hope I make the scenario abstract enough where it’s recognizable for them or others. I think it’s a good practice to have. The broader you can make it, the more people can connect to a situation. It comes down to protecting my privacy, too.

It’s interesting you mention privacy. We live in a world where people don’t just watch and listen to things anymore, they become online sleuths. The Baby Reindeer experience was a prime example of that. Armchair detectives took over, attempting to uncover the real-life identities of certain characters…

It’s f-cking dire. So much of what is good about stand-up is speaking from personal experience and being real and truthful. But that sucks because of the parasocial nature of fandom now. I grew up in the Internet culture of sleuthing things out, but it’s really strange when it becomes about you. It definitely makes me think harder about how I talk about myself. I did a podcast with my friend Alice [Sneeden] and it was so real, almost like private conversations. But there came a point when I was like, “I don’t know if I want people to know everything about me.” It feels like a bit of a shame but also a sign of maturation.

I found it really refreshing during your special when you spoke about the moment when you realized that rather than asking yourself, “Should I have children?” you should instead ask yourself, “Do I want to have children?” It then brought you to the realization that you don’t. How has it been opening up about that in front of an audience?

I’ve had a couple of people after the shows say they got weirdly emotional after hearing that. I have really loved and benefited from all the women who I’ve seen comfortably talk about that, so it’s nice to hear that people are connecting to [me doing] that. 

I’ve had conversations in my own life about whether or not I want children. Oftentimes, when I say I’m not sure and that I might not, I notice that it’s the other person who feels the most uncomfortable. They feel as though they have to fix it or say, “You might change your mind!” Is that something you’ve encountered?

100%. Both teams are trying to recruit you. I’ve been in the stage where I say, “I don’t think I want kids.” And then it got easier to start saying “I don’t,” because for me, it was a concrete position. Also, anyone has the right to change their minds. It’s not a f-cking contract. The worst thing is that idea that the way in which one person chooses to live their life is a threat to the other person’s life. It’s not a criticism of people who do decide to have children. But I feel like that’s in the air, even politically.

It’s very much in the air politically. There were conversations in the U.S. earlier this year, after comments made by J.D. Vance—in which he expressed that people who have children should have more voting power than those who don’t—resurfaced ahead of the presidential election. The idea being that people have less of an impact on the future and thus should have less of a voice because they’re not procreating.

You kind of take away these layers of what people are outwardly saying and what they’re really saying. It’s essentially someone telling you that you were put on this earth to procreate, and that is what womanhood is. I’m a Pisces. I can’t make decisions, at all, yet this is probably one of the decisions in my life where I’m like, “Yeah, this is something I believe I’m happy with.” The fact it riles up, you know, bastards, is just an added bonus. 

I’m interested in how you approach addressing politics and world issues as a stand-up comedian. We have people in the public eye talking out matters such as women’s rights and the Israel-Hamas war, the very topics that are on people’s minds. Do you think about such things when writing or do you want to make your show an escape from politics?

I obviously have political views, which are explored in many different ways. It’s not so much at the forefront of my shows, because it’s not my style, but I never shy away from what I believe. It’s more subconscious. Also those things are very serious things. I would want what I’m saying about it to be something I can really stand by, because I wouldn’t want to be glib. Stand-up, a lot of the time, is about referencing your take on the world around you, which is going to be topical and political. But you’ve got to find what is funny in that. I hope I do that.

Away from your stand-up, you’re now portraying the Taskmaster on the junior version of the game show, which is a full-circle moment after you were a competitor on the main series in 2019. I was unsure at first when I heard about the junior reiteration, wondering how children would deal with the pressure, but they seem to deal with it better than the adults!

They really do. They are so supportive of each other. They’ve got a great attitude when it comes to competing. It puts the f-cking adults to shame. [Laughs] It was just really fun to watch them. I loved watching Taskmaster and being on it. When I went to the U.S. to do press for the third series of Starstruck, everyone was asking me about Taskmaster. I think Seth Meyers is a fan. When I went on his show, the writers were talking to me about the series.

Speaking of Starstruck, it’s rare to get that level of control on a project—to be able to create a series, co-write it, play the lead character, and even direct some of the episodes. How do you feel looking back on that experience?

It’s ruined me forever. [Laughs] It couldn’t have been more amazing in that sense. A lot of things have to go right to get me to that point. But I feel lucky to have been surrounded by the right people. I’m an easily embarrassed person. I’m very hard on myself. It’s nice to have something to look back on that I’m happy with. That’s so rare for me to say.

You joke in your stand-up special that you’re famously not good at endings. But things were wonderfully wrapped up in the third series of Starstruck when it aired in 2023. We witnessed your character Jessie get some much-needed closure. You’ve previously said that character is the closest you think you’ll ever get to playing yourself, so do you think you’ll return to her some day?

I love how we ended it. And a trilogy is so nice to me. There are some series that I revisit and they don’t feel as though they still hold up, but I think Starstruck does. The amount of life you live between the ages of 26 to 30 is monumental. It’s such a mental shift for your brain. The version of me in the first series compared to me in the third series… it’s just an amazing time capsule which I’m so grateful to have. I’m now nearing the age that my character is in the third series of Starstruck. And some of the things that are happening—friends getting married, having babies—it’s so similar to what happened on the show. It’s f-cking weird! Perhaps [we could do] a special, but I have no current plans for another season. Until I’m offered millions of pounds to bring it back. I’ll have no values then.