‘Starstruck’ Creator Rose Matafeo Just Wants to See Women Enjoying Life Onscreen (and to Get ‘Bridget Jones’ Diary’ in the Criterion Collection)

variety.com:

Starstruck” in March 2020, Rose Matafeo found herself onstage at London’s “Magic Mike: Live” having a surreal, more than slightly panicked conversation with a gyrating Australian dancer.“As he was making me touch his chest, he was like, ‘So do you think you’re gonna go back?

The flights are all being canceled!’” Matafeo, who’s from New Zealand, recalls with a laugh that rings with disbelief even two years later. “It was the weirdest experience.”After a lengthy delay, she still got to shoot the first season of “Starstruck” later that year — and, not for nothing, come out the other side with a new appreciation for “Magic Mike: Live” that would eventually make it into the second season, which drops Thursday on HBO Max.

As she did on that stage, Matafeo’s spent most of her life finding comedy wherever she can. Growing up in New Zealand, she obsessed over “Flight of the Conchords,” wore out Mitch Hedberg CDs, and pored over her library’s copy of Jerry Seinfeld’s “Seinlanguage.” She then wrote her own standup set for a local comedy festival and worked at an Auckland club for more chances to perform. “I loved films, and I loved drama, but I always sort of gravitated towards funnier roles,” Matafeo realizes now, because as a teen, “taking yourself seriously is fucking embarrassing.”After moving to the U.K., she won the Edinburgh Comedy Award for her 2018 special “Horndog” (now available to stream on HBO Max) and converted new fans as a contestant on the beloved game show “Taskmaster.” Her “Starstruck” co-star Nikesh Patel, for one, knew of Matafeo well before auditioning for her show. “I was a fan of her standup, and had been to her shows a couple of times,” he says.