“The Roses” Director Jay Roach & Writer Tony McNamara On Benedict Cumberbatch & Olivia Colman’s Comedic Chemistry

Director and producer Jay Roach, known for making some of the most iconic comedies of the last 25 years, is now helming a reimaging of another classic with The Roses. Written by two-time Oscar-nominee Tony McNamara, The Roses is a fresh take on Danny DeVito’s classic 1989 movie The War of the Roses.

While the original boasted the iconic pairing of Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, the Meet the Parents and Austin Powers filmmaker has Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman as a picture-perfect couple pitted against each other, as one’s career rises and the other’s crashes and burns. The Roses ensemble cast also includes two SNL legends in Kate McKinnon and Andy Samberg, as well as Ncuti Gatwa and Allison Janney.

Here, Roach and McNamara explain the power of language, the effectiveness of a well-placed curse word, and more.

The Roses is the first time Benedict and Olivia have appeared on screen together. That must have been fun to pair them for this.

Jay Roach: I couldn’t believe they hadn’t worked together. This came to me with them attached, so I didn’t have to think too hard about it. I jumped in because I imagined that their chemistry might be fantastic. I knew Benedict a little bit. He’s so fast, so funny, and he doesn’t get to do as much comedy as I think he could. I’ve known how hilarious Olivia is since Peep Show, so imagining them doing Tony’s dialogue seemed inevitable. It was even better than I expected.

Tony, you’ve written for Olivia before in Yorgos Lanthimos’s scathing, hilarious The Favourite. Did you write this with her in mind?

Tony McNamara: I similarly came in knowing it was Olivia and Benedict, and it was Searchlight and they that brought it to me. I love both of them, and I wanted to work with her again because she’s so brilliant and fun. They asked, ‘Do you want to do a remake?’ and I said, ‘No, but I’ll do a reimagining.’ Because of those two, I went, ‘We’ve got these incredibly verbally brilliant actors. We’ll just make it more of a verbal, character-driven black comedy, and that will suit their style.’ Because they’re such great dramatic and comic actors, I knew they had this great range, and I’d be able to throw a lot of tone through it.

Was there a particular moment when you knew this was working?

Roach: The first thing we shot with them together was in the Crab Shack, and I could see how they connected and cared so much about each other. Another was after his fortunes had collapsed, she was trying to cheer him up and mentioned that they could focus on the kids now. It’s such a beautifully warm scene, but it’s also really funny. Even in the read-through, they were amazing.

McNamara: They read it for us on Zoom, and it was so good. We couldn’t believe it.

Roach: Everyone was laughing so hard, and the other actors were losing it. That was when it became clear we’d made a good decision to get involved.

Tony, your writing showcases the power of a really well-placed curse word, and you’re not afraid to use the C word. You’re from Australia, and this was shot in the UK, and both places have different cultural attitudes towards its usage compared to the US.

McNamara: I remember we did it in The Favorite, and there was a sense of wondering how the American audience would go with it. In Australia and England, it’s an affectionate term, and it’s a curse. In America, we were worried, but I think because it was placed truthfully, it made sense, and if it lands the right way, maybe we get away with it. We don’t always get away with it. I’m sure my mother would walk out of the cinema. I never try to use it to shock; it’s always used rhythmically or coming from a certain place.

Roach: It’s a big moment since it’s used in the first scene of the movie. Olivia’s character, Ivy, is listing off the ten things she hates about Benedict’s character, Theo, and then lands it with the C word. I was saying, ‘Okay, it’s real. That’s how she would talk.’ They each find it hilarious that they’ve gone that far, which is also part of the scene’s beauty. American audiences often do gasp and howl at the same time. It’s almost an education in language.

What made you decide to film The Roses in the UK? 

Roach: It was more to do with the actors’ schedules and availability than anything. I enjoy the movie magic of doing that. I shot in New Orleans for 1940s LA with Trumbo. We never got to shoot Austin Powers in England; that was always on studio back lots. I embraced it, but it was occasionally challenging. South Devon is so beautiful, and they let us take over this amazing restaurant, called The Winking Prawn, but we built the house and everything else on stage at Pinewood. I got to work with an all-English crew, other than our production designer, who is American. I felt like Ted Lasso because I wasn’t grasping the language as much as I wanted to.

Do you have any examples of the language barrier between the Queen’s English and your own?

Roach: They say we are two countries divided by a common language. I remember Tony wrote a scene that we called “sex on the bonnet,” and I thought the bonnet was the top of the car. I kept looking for a car with a roof strong enough to have sex on, and he was like, ‘No, you idiot, the bonnet is the hood. It’s the thing over the engine.’ There were multiple times like that when some translation was necessary.

In the restaurant scenes, the food is a star in its own right. Did you bring someone in for that?

Roach: We had a food designer, Dorothy Barrick, who was incredible. We also had a consultant, Ollie Dabbous, who’s a great chef from Hide. We really wanted it to feel like it was a manifestation of Ivy’s taste and her creative capability. I love the way it looks.

Did you have to make many adjustments to make the UK look like the US? 

McNamara: When we went to Devon, we weren’t sure that it would look like Northern California, but we were stunned that it did. I don’t think I had to do any rewriting to make that work.

Roach: The only thing that was challenging was the museum. Trying to find the right place that was American enough meant we ended up doing that with visual effects, and cooking up the idea that it was a Maritime Museum in the East Bay.

The weather in the UK can be unpredictable. Did that cause any issues?

Roach: There was one bad night at the Crab Shack in Devon, when it was raining so hard, and there was no place to stand and no place for the crew. It was during the actual storm that we were recreating that there was a giant storm, and I was crazy. Most of the time we got lucky. We didn’t always have cover sets, so we would have been in trouble if there had been a serious amount of storms.

The industry has been debating the importance of comedies getting theatrical releases. What are your thoughts?

Roach: The pandemic took some steam out of the comedy momentum. I got to be part of so many really enjoyable comedies, and I got to see a bunch of comedies when I was starting out in the film business. I hope people are reminded how fun it is to sit in the dark and laugh with strangers. Also, I don’t want too many more of those high-back seats where you can’t hear everybody. I like those old-fashioned, crappy seats where you can feel everybody laughing next to you. We need to remind people how enjoyable and important it is as a community thing to just laugh your ass off altogether in waves.

McNamara: I came up in theater, and that was all about sitting with an audience and hearing them laugh and stuff. It has been lost a lot. When I was growing up, you went to comedies all the time with your friends, and that was part of your culture and how you understood each other. It has gone out of fashion, but when we did a test screening for The Roses with 250 people, it was funny because we had that experience. We were like, ‘Oh my God, I forgot what it was like to sit in a cinema for 100 minutes and have people laugh all the time and feel like you had an experience together’. There was something quite special about it.

The Roses is in theaters from Friday, August 29, 2025.

Featured image: Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch in THE ROSES. Photo by Jaap Buitendijk, Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2025 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.