S
he has filled the Fleabag gap
with her fresh take on the
rom-com and been lauded as
the millennial Nora Ephron.
But the inspiration for Rose
Matafeo’s hit sitcom Starstruck
goes further back — the 29-year-old
comedian from Auckland, New Zea-
land, has an encyclopaedic knowledge
of rom-coms. There were no dysfunc-
tional west London families or cocktail
parties in New York for her to riff on;
she grew up obsessively watching films.
Starstruck was a sleeper hit. It was
released on BBC3 last year and streamed
by nearly five million people, making
it the channel’s biggest comedy of 2021
— not bad considering it was Matafeo’s
first sitcom after starting out as a stand-
up comedian aged 15 — and it returned
this week, with a cameo appearance
from Russell Tovey.
As well as co-writing it, Matafeo plays
Jessie, a Kiwi living in London who
juggles various jobs (at a cinema, on a
flower stall, as a nanny) and strikes up
an unlikely and chaotic romance with
a movie star actor called Tom Kapoor
(Nikesh Patel). Minnie Driver has a
cameo as Kapoor’s agent, shocked
that her celebrity client has fallen for a
“civilian”, as she calls Jessie — in a
gender-reversed version of Notting Hill.
Matafeo says that the Shirley MacLaine
musical Sweet Charity was more of an
inspiration than Richard Curtis’s film.
Like Matafeo, Jessie is a film buff, with
the sort of obsessive interest usually seen
in Nick Hornby’s male characters. “I’ve
always been obsessed with romance
and those are the stories that I gravitate
towards,” Matafeo says. “I channelled
years of movie watching into this show.”
So here are her five favourite rom-coms.Bridget
Jones Diary
(2001)
When I was 17 and at
an all-girls school I’d
watch this on loop. It
was an obsession. It’s because she’s
not Superwoman, not skinny — she
looked more like me. She was funny,
she was messing things up and I loved
that. This film taught me what love is.
Every generation is edging towards
a more diverse representation of
being a woman and Bridget Jones
was a step towards that in terms
of who she was and what she
looked like — it’s absolutely a
white woman living in an
unrealistically large London
flat, and you wouldn’t get away
with people pinching Bridget’s
bum now, but she walked so Jessie
in Starstruck could run. There’s a lot
of pressure on Bridget. Jessie,
conversely, is living a happy life and
love is a nice addition. That’s an
indication of how times are changing.WHEN
GIRL
MEETS
FILM...
MY LIFE
IN ROM-
COMS
The Before
Sunrise/
Sunset/
Midnight trilogy
(1995-2013)
It’s hard to write a
sequel to a rom-com because it goes
against the ethos of a happy ending.
There’s nothing more boring than
two people who are in love. But the
Sunrise trilogy, about an American
man who meets a French woman on
a train and falls in love, manages a
realistic representation of what it is
like after the happy ending. Across the
trilogy it says love is complicated
without undoing the charm of the first
film. So to have a second instalment
of Starstruck was a real challenge to
balance the tropes and conventions
of rom-coms with hopefully a realistic
representation of what it is like to be
in a relationship after the classic
rom-com happy ending of series one.It’s
Complicated
(2009)
Meryl Streep’s
character was married
to Alec Baldwin’s,
they divorced and then have an affair.
It’s not even a good movie, it was more
a reflection of my late-teens psychotic
state of mind when I watched
rom-coms every night. I don’t know
why I connected emotionally with a
woman nearing 60 looking for love,
but I did. And it has nice kitchens.When Harry
Met Sally
(1989)
Rom-coms get bad
reputations, often
because they’re
written by men, who are not the best
people to understand a woman in
love. Sally Albright is written by an
incredibly talented female writer
(Ephron) who empowered her
actors to bring their own thoughts
and ideas, like Meg Ryan improvising
the orgasm scene. I wrote Starstruck
with my friends and within reason I
think that makes Jessie feel more real.Return
to Me
(2000)
The oddest rom-
com ever. David
Duchovny’s late
wife’s heart is donated to Minnie
Driver and they fall in love. Can
you believe that? I cast Minnie
Driver in Starstruck because I have
so many questions, but I’m a little
starstruck. I can’t believe she said
yes. I wished I’d written myself
into a scene with her in series one,
so I made sure I did in series two. cStarstruck continues on BBC3 tomorrow
at 10pm, and is available on iPlayerCongress “in the mob that accosted
Starmer outside parliament”.
Despite Theroux’s thirst for a fresh
shot of American strange, there are
signs that his time as the BBC’s ultimate
roadrunner may be coming to an end.
He has his own production company,
which allows him to take a more execu-
tive role on shows, and thinks it would
be “fun” to present University Challenge,
the quiz show that turned Bamber Gas-
coigne, who died on Tuesday, into a
star. He’s also aware of the toll that a
nomadic lifestyle has taken on his fam-
ily. His own father, the travel writer
Paul Theroux, was often absent during
his childhood. “It puts a strain on every-
one,” he says. “If anything my dad trav-
elled more than I have, so for me that
felt kind of normal. I think I brought that
expectation into the relationship a bit.
[But] I’d like to be around more.” cLouis Theroux’s Forbidden America
starts on BBC2 tonight at 9pm| COMEDY
have found their own
Challenge instead
ROAD?
Rose Matafeo has been
lauded as the next
Phoebe Waller-Bridge —
but the creator of the hit
sitcom Starstruck says
she learnt everything she
knows from
movies. By
Stephen
Armstrong
Universal appeal Rose Matafeo’s
Starstruck was a sleeper hit13 February 2022 11