Rose Matafeo

Links:

Roles:

Taskmaster, Contestant

Biography

Rose Catherine Lettitia Matafeo (born on 25 February 1992) is a New Zealand comedian, actress, and TV presenter.

After graduating from the Class Comedians programme, Matafeo went on to win best newcomer at the 2010 New Zealand International Comedy Festival. She became a host of the popular comedy festival show Fanfiction Comedy in 2012. She has had success with her solo stand-up comedy shows at the festival: Life Lessons I’ve Learnt from the 60s Based on Things I’ve Seen on Television (2011), Scout’s Honour (2012), The Rose Matafeo Variety Hour (2013), and Pizza Party (2014).

She was a TV presenter and host of U Live, which ran on the TVNZ U channel from March 2011 until August 2013. She then took on a new role as a writer for Jono and Ben at Ten, a satirical news and comedy sketch show.

In 2015 she performed a duo show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with Guy Montgomery titled Rose Matafeo and Guy Montgomery Are Friends.

Matafeo co-created and starred in the New Zealand sketch comedy show Funny Girls for three seasons from 2015 until 2018.

In 2018, Matafeo won the Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, for her show Horndog. She was the first person of colour to win the prestigious award for a solo show, and the first New Zealander. Only four other female solo stand-up comedians had won the award before her.

Having toured as a stand-up comedian for ten years, Matafeo said in 2018 that she wanted to take a break from comedy and do more acting, writing and directing.

She has been playing the role of Talia in the ABC comedy Squinters since 2018. She directed five episodes of the New Zealand TV comedy Golden Boy in 2019, and returned to the second season of the show as a member of the supporting cast in 2020.

In 2019, HBO Max and BBC Three announced they had commissioned Starstruck, a scripted comedy created and written by, and starring, Matafeo. It was also announced that Matafeo had been cast as the lead in her first feature film, Baby Done.

Also in 2019, she was a contestant on the ninth series of Taskmaster, appeared on Josh Widdicombe’s show Hypothetical on Dave, and made her US television debut as a comedian on Conan O’Brien’s talk show Conan.

In 2020 she appeared in 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown on Channel 4, and her comedy special Horndog was released on HBO Max.

Matafeo also hosts the podcast Boners of the Heart with comedian and writer Alice Snedden on the Little Empire Podcast Network.

[Source: Wikipedia, 02/03/2021.]