Rose Matafeo and Mike Wozniak on Junior Taskmaster

It must be one of the most sought-after jobs in comedy, to host Channel 4’s new Junior Taskmaster spin-off.

But Rose Matafeo and her sidekick Mike Wozniak have revealed they did no auditions nor Screen Test to land their coveted roles – but just received a call from show creator Alex Horne asking if they’d do it.

‘I was quite shocked I was considered,’ Matafeo says. ‘It all happened quite fast. Actually, I feel there should have been a more lengthy process…

‘A series of tests, assessments,’ Wozniak adds,. ‘Maybe when we were on the series, that was it. It’s all just been leading here the whole time!

‘Alex just gave me a ring. At quite an inconvenient time, on a Wednesday, rushing to get to a shop. I almost didn’t  bother answering. I’m glad I did.

‘I think Alex's style, and the whole of Taskmaster, is to just  decide something and go for it. I think it’s rare in TV that there’s not this huge process.’

Joking that the lax recruitment process – ‘quite a fringe theatre approach’ –  could open Horne  to a ‘tribunal or something’, one thought suddenly struck him: ’I don’t know if I'm the first person he called. That's a good question.’

‘Me neither, actually,’ Matafeo notes. ‘This is classic us. We think we were the first choice, maybe a lot of people said no…’

We are talking in the recently-opened Taskmaster Experience in South-East London to launch the new show for contestants aged 9 to 11, with launches at 8pm next Friday. 

Other than Matafeo and Wozniak replacing original Taskmaster Greg Davies and sidekick Horne, the main difference is that it Junior Taskmaster run as a tournament, with five heats each comprising five new contestants, rather than having the same line-up across the series. 

Then two semis and a final decided the winner of the trophy, a golden version of Matafeo’s head, right,  – ‘much heavier than Greg’s because of all the hair’, she notes.

The tasks and the studio revelations were run as per the adult version, and although a parent and chaperone were present at the Junior Taskmaster house – a larger property from the one used in the main show – they did not intervene.

‘It's very much in the spirit of the adult shows,’ Wozniak said. ‘No one's helping, no one's mollycoddling, no one's giving hints. If rules appear to be broken, that's discussed afterwards.’

Matafeo said that while in the studio watching the children see how they and their rivals undertook the tasks was ‘the most Childlike I've ever felt like doing anything. I'm going, "This is amazing".  To watch it, and to see them watch themselves was just, so wonderful.’

What about the prospect of them seeing – or being told – how badly they had done, and how hard they may take that?  ‘I think they were incredibly resilient,’ she said. ‘To compare it to the adult version, I took it much worse, 100 per cent.’

‘There was the odd tear shed in disappointment, because people obviously wanted to come back,’ Wozniak adds. ‘But they [the losing contestants] were so lovely to the people who got through. Hands were shaken in a way that I'm not sure you can trust comedians to do. I was very, very impressed.’

He said 9 to 11 was the perfect age group as ‘their self-consciousness hasn't quite kicked in yet. There are definitely older kids who are big into Taskmaster but I think if you were to point the camera the average group of 15 year olds, they would tell you to naff off, and rightly so…’

Matafeo added: ‘The production teams have done such an amazing job of be keeping it fun and not scary, because it could be so terrifying, doing TV.’

‘They had so much fun during the tasks, and then, in the studio, when they walk out, you can see it on their faces when they look at  the audience, and go, "Oh my gosh, what is this?" But they look so genuinely excited.’

Wozniak, who has two daughters aged 10 and 13, said: ’At the very beginning, I arrogantly assumed, because I've got kids at that age and I've done the show,  "I bet this is how they'll do the tasks", I was  wrong every single time. So it was a constant surprise.

‘People warn you against working with children and animals but I think that's just people who work with children and animals want to keep it a secret. It's quite a lot of fun.

‘Particularly for this show, because all the comedians are trying to do on the grown-up version is try to get to that  child brain. As comedians, we’re always trying to backtrack to this chaotic child brain that isn't restrained by what's been imposed on later on. 

‘They [the kids], come fresh-brained. The brains aren't atrophied by their misspent 20s. They’re game and they're raring to go.’

They were also all well aware of what they were letting themselves in for – ‘battle-tested veterans’, as Wozniak puts it – having been recruited though the Taskmaster education programme, that works with schools.  

This is not Matafeo’s first time working with children, having been on kids’ TV in her native New Zealand in her youth.

‘I did children's television when I was a child, since I was about 12,’ she said. ‘So I know that adults who make children's television aren't necessarily that fond of children.’

That doesn’t apply to her, though. ‘I think children's TV is actually a lot more fun and entertaining than adult television,’ she said. ‘And honestly, I love my friends who have been on the show, but I would much rather host a show with children than any of the people who have been on Taskmaster.’

 ‘Some of them had quite terrifyingly old souls where you would talk to them and go, "I feel like you're an 80-year-old in the  body of a child." Some of them will come up with really wise, very clever things and that freaked me out sometimes.’

And what advice did their predecessors in the Taskmaster thrones give to the new hosts?

‘Alex was very helpful and very supportive,’ Wozniak revealed. ‘Greg told me not to fuck it up.’

Matafeo joked: ‘Greg didn't say a thing to me. He's jealous, threatened – or doesn't know that me or the show exists.’

But they also felt no pressure to be carbon-copies of the originals. 

‘People let it be what it was,’ Matafeo says. ‘I think it would have felt a little forced and strained to try to fit ourselves into the roles of Greg and Alex. 

‘It happens with every [international] version of Taskmaster –  that you have to be yourself  in those roles, rather than trying to be a facsimile of those guys.’

What’s the main difference in their dynamic?

‘We like each other more than Alex and Greg,’ Matafeo laughs. ‘We are very supportive. We have to be supportive of each other in the face of the children!’

Wozniak concurs: ‘We have a harder nemesis, a tougher opposition. A bunch of comics and entertainers, these guys are walkovers, right? They crumble in the face of Greg, whereas the children if they unite and organise…’

‘We very much have the energy of an aunt and uncle in  a Roald Dahl book,’ Matafeo says. ‘We're really trying to just keep everything together.’

• Junior Taskmaster airs weekly at 8pm from Friday November 8 on Channel 4.

Published: 29 Oct 2024