Kiwi comedian Rose Matafeo may not have had any babies, but she does know a thing or two about life-changing events. In 2018, her standup show Horndog won the Edinburgh Comedy Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. To understand how huge a deal this is you only have to glance down the list at previous years’ winners: Hannah Gadsby, Sam Simmons, David O’Doherty, Daniel Kitson, Dylan Moran and Steve Coogan are just some of the names that leap out.
And yet Matafeo, 28, can’t help feeling like an imposter. “I mean, I didn’t feel confident calling myself a comedian until like maybe a year before I won that award,” she tells Time Out. “I’m only kind of semi-confident in it now. To be a ‘comedian’ feels like it’s an occupation that’s a matter of opinion. Although I suppose I am a comedian now, I have literally no other skills.”
Matafeo is lying on her bed in London at 10.17pm, drinking a beer (“the publicist is in Auckland, so they can’t take the beer off me”), speaking on her phone about another arguably life-changing event: her first starring role in a movie. In Curtis Vowell and Sophie Henderson’s Baby Done, executive produced by Taika Waititi, Matafeo plays Zoe, a tree surgeon who reacts to the news of her pregnancy by going into denial and trying to cram as much DINK fun into her life before everything changes.
Matafeo, who’s “nowhere near getting pregnant”, says she can relate to the story, which is based on the filmmakers’ own experience of parenthood. “I’m an incredibly anxious person, so my immediate reaction to a situation like that is to freak the hell out and go ‘I have to do some crazy shit and I am going to have FOMO if I don’t do all of this stuff right now.’ So that was extremely easy to play.”
In the film, her character's boyfriend, Tim, has the opposite reaction to the baby news: he goes into nesting mode, enduring odd looks when Zoe fails to turn up to the antenatal classes he’s enrolled them in, and struggling to get in the mood when Zoe organises a threesome with her best friend Molly (Emily Barclay). A casting masterstroke has Tim played by Matthew Lewis, better known to the world as the Harry Potter saga’s Neville Longbottom. Indeed, the stars’ chemistry can be partly put down to the fact that Matafeo is a massive Hogwarts fan: she first met Lewis years ago when she obtained his autograph at a pop culture expo.
“I got a photo of me and him together,” Matafeo laughs. “So officially we met when I was 14. I showed him the photo and he remembered the top he was wearing. So I’m shocked that he didn’t remember me, I was obviously a stunning babe.”
Baby-themed romcoms – bubcoms – are nothing new, but the film’s forays into darker comedic places, such as Zoe’s unwillingness to give up activities that pregnant women are advised not to pursue (bungee jumping, long-haul flights), give it an edge, as does the deadpan irreverence that is a hallmark of films where Waititi is involved. Matafeo praises the Jojo Rabbit Oscar-winner for bringing diversity to New Zealand’s filmic output. “His production company is a great initiative to support a lot of films from largely indigenous filmmakers, or people who are not white men.”
Matafeo’s father is Samoan, and she’s the first POC to win the Edinburgh Award for a solo show. She launched her standup career as a 15 year old through the NZ International Comedy Festival’s Class Comedians program (“and nobody stopped me from continuing to do it, so it’s their fault”). You may know her from her role as Talia in the ABC’s Squinters, or her Boners of the Heart podcast with Alice Snedden, where they discuss their outré celebrity crushes.
Now based in London, where she is currently shooting her own scripted comedy for the BBC and HBO, Matafeo says she was lucky to get a flight to New Zealand just before its borders closed in March, and was able to enjoy a relatively restriction-free six months at home. “I was at my nan’s. I watched a lot of MasterChef Australia with her, which was awesome. I did a small comedy tour with my buddy Guy [Montgomery] – we organised that in one day and spent a week driving around NZ doing stand-up. I feel a little bit of guilt to be from a country that got their shit together and also is lucky enough to be an island.”
It’s that imposter syndrome again. Despite having a chronic self-confidence problem – “stand-up as a medium for me is ‘I hate myself, and I want to tell you about it’” – Matafeo says she’s ambitious and dreams of winning Oscars. She’s optimistic about her film’s box-office chances. “Because it’s one of two things that are on in cinemas. It’s basically Tenet and Baby Done.”
Baby Done screens in Sydney from October 22.