In Her New Comedy Special, Rose Matafeo Reminds Us Life Is An Endless Loop

The "Starstruck" creator and star turned 16,000 words in her phone’s Notes app into a Max comedy special.

Rose Matafeo is “very bad at endings,” as she warns the audience at the start of her new comedy special.

But beginnings can also be tricky — both in general and specifically in filmed standup specials. In many of them, the comedian faces the challenge of coming up with a creative opening, a new variation on the usual scene of them entering the theater and taking the stage.

“How many ways can you show a comedian walking down a hallway? It’s very difficult. I’m obsessed with just watching the first bits of all these comedy specials to see, like, How did they walk to the stage?” Matafeo told me in an interview. “There are people who do it in much cooler ways, but I do think, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Whatever your version is of that, I find it’s quite exciting. It usually works.”

Her version is an opening dance sequence set to the Janet Jackson song “The Pleasure Principle,” which is how she kicks off “Rose Matafeo: On and On and On,” premiering Thursday on Max. The dance is a component she has retained from the live versions of the show, which she has performed in various cities over the past year.

“I always started the show with the dance because I hate introducing myself on the stage. I think it feels so silly a lot of the time. So, very early on the live show, I was, like, ‘How do I get onto the stage and start the show in a fun way?’” she said, before joking it was also for a pretty practical reason when she was performing the show night after night. “Genuinely, I was just, like, ‘What’s a way that I can do at least a small amount of physical exercise?’”