Top 25 Rose Matafeo Quotes

I would hate to be a standup comedian for ever. It would not be good. It would be the worst.

I wear sneakers all the time. Well, I can’t fit any girls’ shoes. I’ve got big feet.

I like silly photos of me, looking stupid.

Comedy is quite hard and it takes like a decade to figure out what kind of comedian you are, so don’t quit.

For so many years, women and people who aren’t white have had to be undeniable to get into line-ups.

A lot of stand-up is talking about your perspective in the world and your experiences in life. And I think it takes any comedian a while to find out what their thing is, or what they feel good doing on stage.

I’m very ambitious. I’m the kind of person who still feels as if they could win an Oscar. Albeit, with no evidence to support that expectation whatsoever.

New Zealand has this funny attitude towards celebrities where we’re not so impressed. We are secretly impressed, but we never want to show it, so we’re not sycophantic about it.

It’s almost like I’m obsessed with being in love.

I felt that mainstream comedy caters to men and people don’t even notice.

Part of making a relationship work is compromise and I think the idea of compromise in relationships is something that we lack in my generation.

I wanted to make a TV show that I would want to watch and I naturally gravitated towards the genre of rom-com, because that’s something that I have so much love for.

When you have a kid, it is the death of a certain life, but it’s also the start of a new version of it.

Being an aunty is the best – exactly what I wanted from this – someone to have ownership over but no obligation to take care of.

I can never enjoy anything in the moment. And, unfortunately, you live your life in the moment, and I find that incredibly difficult.

You can see that the successful comedians who have come from New Zealand, like Flight of the Conchords, they had the time to become what they are, and go overseas as a fully formed thing.

I wouldn’t say I always have the talent to do something – I think I definitely probably have a moderate amount of talent – but I can pretend to have confidence or, I guess, charisma… It’s so hard to look at myself like that.

Either I’m going to be like an MGM starlet – get married five times, it will be a bit of a laugh – or I will get pregnant, by accident, with someone I barely know. We’ll get through it. They’ll be a great co-parent. We definitely won’t end up together.

The fact that I went back to New Zealand, a country where you are legally allowed to date, and I couldn’t manage to get one – I was like, I’m done with this country. I’m fleeing back to London.

Every time I go back to New Zealand I live with my Nan, and it is the sweetest thing. I don’t know if she fully understood how much you are catered for on set, so she’d send me to work with like, pavlovas and lemon drizzle cakes and smoked snapper.

I literally tried to get one date in five months in Auckland, and I couldn’t. Auckland is quite small, so you know everyone, and everyone in Auckland has a partner already, so there’s nobody to date.

Being a comedian, all the stress is there in the moment of doing it. The rest of it is mint: you hang out with your mates, go to the arcades, go to the cinema in the daytime, it’s like being a teenager all the time.

Unfortunately we live in a world where I think women aren’t actively encouraged or at least not empowered to make good work in every creative sphere, particularly in comedy.

Most of what I like doing in performing is connecting with an audience. What’s the point of doing standup if you’re not doing that?

I’m highly anxious, ambitious, and very hard on myself.