This is a dark comedy, and I’m not just talking about the efforts Sarah Roberts has mades for her show’s lighting and atmosphere. For ‘Scary Movie 7’, Roberts mixes the light and the dark, while displaying the energy of some of the more horrific movie heroines, drilling right down past the layers of the para-social to scream, ‘Do you love me!?’

You’ve said that you need our souls… can I ask what for?

There’s a lot of audience interaction. I ended up speaking to the crowd quite a lot in my last show and I think that it’s really funny to desperately asking members of the audience if they love me. I feel like the energy of the show is sort of- have you seen Pearl? (For context, a murderous horror protagonist who snaps after being denied her Hollywood dreams of being a star). I think it’s so funny to pick on people in the crowd and for then to be quite scared. But the real burden of the show is actually about having massive boobs.

Why did you want to bring horror elements to your show?

I’ve never done any kind of horror film stuff before. But I think my comedic voice, or whatever, is quite dark a lot of the time. So it felt like a natural place to go. I also think that you can get away with so much within the context. So within the show, there’s body horror, it’s stand-up but there’s a lot of props and I think that within the realm of horror and especially I love camp ’80s horror and I think that allows to play a lot more with the form and make is really dramatic and stupid. And maybe the audience goes along with it a little bit more because it’s cushioned by being slightly stylised.

Your show is called ‘Scary Movie 7’, what’s your favourite scary movie?

I came late to horror. I’ve always been so scared, like, I was a terrified person and I always, when I was younger, I thought my house was haunted. I was really scared of everything. I think I’ve only been able to enjoy horror in the last few years and then I’ve gotten really into it. I really do love those MaXXXine and Pearl and all of those [X Film Series]. I really like Death Becomes Her, it’s the silliest thing I’ve ever seen and it’s so grotesque. Obviously it’s a comedy horror, I think I am really scared of horror, horror.

What is it about para-social relationships you wanted to look at?
My favourite comedy is always emotionally true but very, very silly. I think this show is really absurd about fear, like my biggest fear is being alone. But my second biggest fear is being around people. So it’s exploring that. The show really is around two kind of central stories… one is, I suppose my original sin, which is that I ate my twin in the womb and had this real awareness of my twin I ate in the womb and feel like I was condemned to loneliness because it was at my hands. [The other] is a lot of stuff about… basically I wrote this tweet when I was drunk and it went incredibly viral during lockdown. It was at 2am; my ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend had liked my Instagram post from 2016. There was so much discourse, there was a refinery29 article, it was crazy!

What makes the Fringe special?

It’s just amazing to see so much art in one space! Before I went to the Fringe I didn’t know what it would be at all. It is the intensity of, almost like a music festival, but it goes on for a month. I love that everything is open until 5am, I think that’s really good. There’s something so romantic about Edinburgh Fringe, everyone’s taken such a punt and it’s really the antithesis of being on your phone all day and spending so much time online. Everyone’s going out and watching things in person! People have put so much into their shows and I think that’s such a beautiful thing.

You describe your show as a confessional, is that just for you or for the audience too?

It’s more a two-way. I had a work-in-progress on Tuesday and a woman came up to me and confessed something afterwards… the bleakest thing I’ve ever heard and she told it in such an excitable way and I really, really loved that! And I think that she show is that, it’s very light and dark.

Summarise your show in five words?

Absorbed, irredeemable, curse, arsehole, cake.

‘Scary Movie 7’ is at Monkey Barrel 2 from Mon 3 to Sun 30 Aug 2026