Do we like Rose Matafeo?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A clean record with no harm found, held back from the top because the evidence of real-world good works is thin.
Rose Matafeo is a New Zealand comic who now lives in the UK. She met fellow comedian Rhys Mathewson at 15 through the teen comedy programme Class Comedians, so she has been at this a long time. She has said she grew up on American sitcoms on TV3, and she's the daughter of a teacher.
Her career has been a steady climb. She competed on UK Taskmaster in 2019, later hosted Taskmaster Junior, and now she's done the NZ version too. She names Starstruck, the romcom she made with her best friends, as her favourite project, which tells you she likes working with her mates.
The one real stoush on her record is from 2020. She said she was dropped as MC of the Green Party's campaign launch at the request of an MP, Golriz Ghahraman, and said she was incredibly disappointed. Ghahraman said she hadn't seen Matafeo's email and called it a misunderstanding, and the party called it a miscommunication. Ghahraman said Matafeo was welcome to host, and that's where the public record stops.
On the harm check, we looked for anything anti-LGBTQ+, anti-women, anti-migrant or anti-science and came up empty. The nearest thing to a headline is PinkNews revisiting her old Horndog routine, where she joked that being a straight woman was the 'worst sexuality/gender combination'. That's a gag at her own expense, and the article carried no reaction from her. Her recent co-stars in New Zealand Spy include Paul Williams, Joe Thomas and Bret McKenzie, and nothing in what we read ties that crew to anything harmful.
The recent stuff is all light. New Zealand Spy, a six-part 1960s spy spoof, aired on TVNZ this year, and the Spinoff's reviewer called it an endearingly silly comedy that was uneven in places. Matafeo plays Sue, described as the most competent recruit. She then filmed Taskmaster NZ, where she calls herself the show's 'heel' and says she 'failed at every stage'.
On the good-stuff front, the record is honest but thin. We found no big charity patronage or campaign she's attached to, just a career of lifting up mates and staying loyal to the local scene, including coming home to film in New Zealand. In her own words, she likes stepping outside the algorithm and getting back into terrestrial TV. That's a taste, not a cause.