The normally sunny and vivacious Rose Matafeo has made the startling confession that hosting television show Junior Taskmaster made her “drunk with power”.
When it comes to children, she says, her attitude has always been reminiscent of the evil baroness from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: “always trying to wear incredibly chic outfits and lock children away in dungeons”.
“So it was a real shift to me, being around these kids.”
Asked why, given this attitude, she decided to work on a show where she is working almost exclusively with children, she says, “Oh, I needed the money really.”
She says she also felt it was important for her career to connect with the younger generation.
“My hope is that these children remember me in the future and the television commissioner will throw me a bone.”
Having herself appeared as a contestant on season 9 of the adult version of Taskmaster in the UK, she is in a better position than anyone to compare the two. She says the junior version is far more ruthless:
“It is the Hunger Games for children.”
Her job as the show’s host is to judge the kids and rank their performance on each task. She says she found this challenging to begin with but adds that by the end, “I kind of enjoyed it”.
She says she reached the point where she felt free to be “quite brutal” when speaking to kids.
As a contestant on the adult Taskmaster, she says she hadn’t understood how host Greg Davies had been able to be so casually cruel to contestants. But now she’s the host, she says, she gets it.
“It’s easy. It’s power. I’m drunk on it.”
She says that while there were no tears from the kids on the show, there were a few “wobbly moments”, which were mostly handled well by the on-set chaperones, and by the children’s parents.
“The priority for me and [co-host] Mike [Wozniak] really was to make it a fun experience for kids who are in the most insane situation, and they thrived in it really.
“There were some wobbly moments, but to be honest, more moments where they were being genuinely aggressive with me, with me having to – really – almost call in security.
“We’re out there alone. That’s what people forget. Me and Mike are there alone.
“So yeah, I’d say wobbly moments for me. I think I was in tears or close to tears a lot of the time.”
But, because she’s nothing if not a woman of contradictions, she adds: “I enjoy talking to children far more than I do adults.” She says she particularly enjoys the lack of small talk, the fact there are no social hierarchies and no expected behaviours.
“You can let that go,” she says.
Although she no longer lives in New Zealand, she is one of this country’s most famous and globally successful entertainers. She’s one of the most well-known comedians in the UK and achieved worldwide fame following the success of her hit BBC sitcom Starstruck. She’s had her own HBO comedy special, played the lead in a Taika Waititi-produced movie (Baby Done) and has appeared on Graham Norton, Conan O’Brien and all the other places the A-list go to chat about their big global projects.
But she sounds like she’s still vaguely baffled by her fame and the opportunities that seem to continually appear for her.
“I feel like nothing has really changed within me about it all. I’m constantly, surprised and always really feeling very lucky.”
She tells a story about driving a Winnebago down Hollywood Boulevard with her friend Alice Snedden and being waved down by a man outside the famous street’s famous Chinese Theatre. She assumed the man was telling her where to park the Winnebago, but instead he pointed at her and said “Starstruck! Starstruck!”
She says Snedden assumed the man was a paid actor.
“It was the most stupid thing I’d ever experienced.”
Asked what it’s like to have reached that level of fame, she says,
“I mean, it’s like nothing.
“It really means nothing.
“It’s like air.
“It’s not ... it’s not really a thing.”
While she might be too easily drunk on power, she’s not about to let fame go to her head.
Junior Taskmaster screens on TVNZ2 at 7pm Thursdays and streams on TVNZ+