Rose Matafeo

“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.”

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

“It's almost like I'm obsessed with being in love.”

“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.”

“But being in love - or actually just chasing boys who don't like me as much as I like them - for me is the ultimate thing.”

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

“You get used to such micro-aggressions, those sneaky remarks. Especially in comedy: when the mood is meant to be light you can get accused of not being able to take a joke.”

“I've always been an anxious performer. I've never liked performing.”

“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.”

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

“I'm never intently political about anything, I just speak my mind from my perspective.”

“I felt that mainstream comedy caters to men and people don't even notice.”

“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 like dressing up when I can... but it's like when someone does my make-up or my hair and I feel uncomfortable or I'm wearing something weird, I just feel like it's not the best representation of myself.”

“I'm highly anxious, ambitious, and very hard on myself.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”