'Starstruck' or how Rose Matafeo has resurrected faith in the romantic comedy

Rose Matafeo was 26 years old when she had an idea drunk on whiskey on a plane.

Thinking over the luscious gossip of some friends and her wild night with a famous actor after finding him drinking alone in a London pub, she thought: What if she turned that anecdote into a romantic comedy?

How could she not do it like that if she had spent half her life marked by that gender.

From the age of thirteen she was obsessed with those movies.

five times a week

and her repertoire as a

he focused on laughing at the clichés with which he had nurtured his sentimental education.

Matafeo, daughter of a Rastafarian Samoan minister and a half-Croat-Scottish who was born in her parents' bed in Auckland (New Zealand) and raised under that paternal creed, she had been in London for two years at the time.

She moved to try her luck with her career and strengthen her relationship with fellow comedian James Acaster, who lived there.

The first did have an effect: in 2018 it won the award for best comedy at the Edinburgh Fringe festival.

She got it with

, a monologue where she wondered what her life would be like in a

(short for romantic comedy), assuming that in that imaginary she was destined to be the weird friend and not the sexy but clumsy protagonist ("I'm ethnically ambiguous and I have curly hair. I'm the one who will say something clever and never be heard from again, "he said).

That triumph led her to a contract with the BBC to record

(an adjective that defines those obsessed with movie celebrities), a series that he would write and star in about what would happen if the center of the story was taken by the clever and eccentric, the one who was always condemned to stay on the sidelines.

A project that remained at home, because it also included her two roommates and friends in real life: the comedian Alice Snedden would act as co-writer and the actress Emma Sidi would be Kate, her best friend in that fiction.

Rose Matafeo has subverted the archetypes of the romantic comedy, while respecting its essence, in 'Starstruck'.Pete Dadds

With a twist that updates the starting point of

(1991),

focuses on the story of Jessie, a movie blockbuster who lives in a shared house in London combining several jobs and who, in the first chapter, spends a night of drunkenness and sex with a celebrity he meets drinking alone at a New Year's Eve party.

In a world where practically anyone can be a star in some corner of the internet, even if you never make ends meet, your date won't be just

any niche

When he wakes up he will understand that he has slept with Tom Kappor (played by Nikesh Patel), a famous millionaire

that practically the whole planet knows.

Although she will connect with him instantly, she will not look for any type of commitment (on his cell phone she will save it as "Tom famous") and will find him, sometimes casually and sometimes not so much, for a whole year.

If the first season reversed the codes of the romantic comedy by considering to what extent the protagonist was willing to bet on a relationship in which he is the one who wants to commit in a sincere and honest way, the second delves into what would happen after the titles of credit, when a happy ending is intuited.

Rose Matafeo (Jessie) and Nikesh Patel (Tom), at a moment in the second season of 'Starstruck'.

subvert the archetypes

“Unlike other grittier shows about drifting 20-somethings like

or

You, where the creators are also writers and stars,

apart with these

(combination of drama and comedy) and is claimed as a luminous series”, points out the professor and coordinator of the Department of Film Studies at ESCAC, María Adell.

The academic assures that the series is steeped in the clichés and precedents that define the genre, but it subverts them, fully respecting its essence.

“Here the archetypes are inverted: the one who is allergic to commitment, the one who boycotts the relationship and the one who doesn't clarify is her, but at the same time respects the general tone that always tends towards optimism”, she indicates.

With hardly any promotion in Spain and almost behind the scenes in the HBO Max catalog, in our country

has been becoming great with the best strategy: slowly and through word of mouth, exploding in this second season.

"I think that what distinguishes

from more classic

and what it achieves is that the viewer thinks 'it could be me, this could happen to me,'" says Leticia Vila-Sanjuán, a columnist at

and an expert in this genre. .

She is not misguided.

Without responding to the canons of normative beauty (which would be to be at the antipodes of the sculptural and perfectly toned bodies that we see in other series such as

), Matafeo has connected with a whole generation of women who avidly consume content about disastrous and penniless thirtysomethings, women who seek their place in the world without coveting glass offices or engagement rings.

Satisfied but restless single women, young people who assume their passage to adult life without wanting to give up their identity and independence.

And that is essentially what

is about .

"Neither is she too good for the world around her, nor is he the protective mystery man, which makes everything fit perfectly," says the expert communicator in pop culture and tracker of digital trends from her

, Ainhoa ​​Marzol, about the reason for the generational connection with the series.

Rose Matafeo and Emma Sidi in 'Starstruck'. Courtesy of HBO MAX

bright secondaries

Another of the many of the

, which frames it as heir to the best

a la

or

(with a brilliant tribute in the second season) is that, as the academic Adell recalls, "if the protagonists are magnetic is because they are supported by absolutely brilliant supporting characters.

Something that another addict of the genre, the artist Rocío Quillahuaman, also maintains: “A good

makes you fall in love with the protagonists and their friends, but it also has to make you laugh.

Those that are made now, in general, are not funny.

They get beautiful people without any charisma to say the least funny things that have ever been said.

not only is it an excellent comedy, but it also makes you fall in love with them and want them to be your friends, like

,

or

, he points out

Minnie Driver and Alice Snedden (co-writer of the series, with a brilliant cameo in the second season), in a moment of 'Starstruck'. Pete Dadds

While Spain continues to discover the phenomenon without being able to stop recommending it, in the US, Matafeo has become the new head of the

.

She has passed through the set of the

midnight shows by Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers.

has profiled him, and

investigates his influences in shaping generational romance (hint: his thing is a mix of

and K-dramas, the Korean romance series).

“All the effervescence, the luminosity, the faith in human beings and relationships is in

”, Adell points out about a perfect series to animate and fill the void of those dark days in which the world always seems ready to get uglier than we are used to.

A bet on the television grid that Ainhoa ​​Marzol perfectly sums up: “In the end, what comes out is something that doesn't change your life, but about which you end up saying: 'hopefully more of these'”.

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