OK, enough mush. What do they hate about one another?<\/p>\n
\u201cTricky,\u201d says Cumberbatch, ruminatively. \u201cI hate how …\u201d<\/p>\n
Colman moans. \u201cOh God, he\u2019s gonna do \u2018I hate, but a nice way.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cF**k,\u201d he says. \u201cI hate how she thinks five steps ahead of me. I hate how predictable I am around Olivia and I hate what a grumpy ar****le I feel in the face of her unmitigated joy.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s been her \u201cproud friend\u201d for ages, he continues; leapt out of bed in his pyjamas to party with her when Yorgos Lanthimos<\/a>\u2019s The Favourite swept the Baftas<\/a>. Her intuition is \u201cextraordinary. It\u2019s all just there, not overcooked. A very raw talent.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s one of the things I love about Ben,\u201d Colman chips in.<\/p>\n \u201cI do the heavy talking?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt means I can have a cup of tea. Probably do some emails. But also I want to hold your hand and go, \u2018don\u2019t be hard on yourself\u2019.\u201d <\/p>\n She pats him and adds: \u201cBecause you do that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYeah,\u201d he nods, sheepish. \u201cI do do that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut you are amazing. Very good and wonderful. I wish you could simply go, \u2018I\u2019m great!\u2019. I\u2019m going to enrol you in a workshop. No! Let\u2019s go on a walking holiday together! I\u2019ll hold your hand all the time and you\u2019ll end up so happy.\u201d A manic cackle.<\/p>\n He joins in. \u201cI\u2019ll walk off a cliff because I won\u2019t be scared of death any more.\u201d<\/p>\n [\u00a0Benedict Cumberbatch: \u2018It\u2019s really important to understand monsters, in order to stop them\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n \u201cWe won\u2019t go anywhere with hills or cliffs,\u201d says Colman. \u201cJust back to my house every evening for loads of pasta. We\u2019ll go on big round walks. You can\u2019t get lost if you always go left.\u201d<\/p>\n He laughs, she beams. \u201cWhen Ben\u2019s face lights up, it\u2019s a whole-body shake. It\u2019s properly joyful working with him. Oh, this is sickly, isn\u2019t it.\u201d The door opens and something green and livid in a glass is ushered in. \u201cOh f**k, here comes my wanky matcha,\u201d says Cumberbatch bashfully. \u201cWhat colour is your wee after that?\u201d asks Colman. He grins. \u201cI\u2019ll show you.\u201d<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n The Roses is less of an acid brew than its source material: Warren Adler\u2019s 1981 novel, The War of the Roses, and the 1989 adaptation by Danny DeVito<\/a>, starring Michael Douglas<\/a> and Kathleen Turner<\/a>. Gone is the quasi-rape, the almost-murder and the moment Douglas\u2019s lawyer urinates on the fish that Turner\u2019s aspiring caterer has prepped for a tasting.<\/p>\n In the 2025 film, she has been upgraded to a chef while he becomes an architect. The pair escape London for California with their young twins, where her career rockets as his nosedives. She\u2019s on magazine covers. He handles nits.<\/p>\n Yet relations only crumble so far: Ivy and Theo do sort of want to stay together. But if they can\u2019t, they each definitely want to stay sole owners of the swanky beach villa he\u2019s designed and she\u2019s bankrolled.<\/p>\n Capitalism is the problem, reckons screenwriter Tony McNamara, an Australian best known for his work with Yorgos Lanthimos (including The Favourite<\/a>). \u201cIt\u2019s become an element of marriage,\u201d he says, earlier that morning. \u201cBoth partners have to work. In the 1960s and \u201970s we might have been less emotionally articulate, but it\u2019s tougher today because of the idea you have to get fulfilment from your career and be special.\u201d Balancing that with a partner, children and a mortgage is \u201cridiculous\u201d, he says.<\/p>\n Theo pours his thwarted ambition into his children, drilling them into athletic prodigies. \u201cIt\u2019s really hard for men,\u201d says McNamara, \u201cbecause they\u2019re brought up for a sort of ego success; that\u2019s the way to define himself. When that\u2019s taken away, he makes his kids the success.\u201d<\/p>\n Ivy enjoys her acclaim but comes to covet Theo\u2019s bond with the twins. \u201cWhen she got the chance,\u201d says McNamara, \u201cher ego was as big as his. And she couldn\u2019t balance it, either.\u201d<\/p>\n It would be possible to do a bracingly traditionalist reading of The Roses. To see the film as a cautionary tale about the perils of swapping gender roles \u2013 or even of progress full stop.<\/p>\n \u201cSteady on, Tony,\u201d says Colman, when I recount his theories. \u201cI mean, in the \u201960s and \u201970s, women weren\u2019t really encouraged to …\u201d She pauses, then assumes a fond Aussie accent. \u201cOh yeah! I didn\u2019t mean that … I\u2019m gonna get in so much trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n Cumberbatch attempts a defence. \u201cLook, there was an idealism in the \u201960s, the fledgling of equality … \u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWomen always thought about equality,\u201d counters Colman.<\/p>\n \u201cBut then there were open relationships and changing gender roles,\u201d continues Cumberbatch. \u201cI think we are in an era where we are trying to have it all.\u201d<\/p>\n Yes, says Colman, firmly. \u201cWhat I like about this is it\u2019s not about genders; it\u2019s about roles at home. It could be a same-sex couple.\u201d She pauses. \u201cI mean, it could have all been solved with a nanny.\u201d<\/p>\n Cumberbatch perks up. \u201cI did think that at one point. Because though they hate each other, there\u2019s no trust issue. They\u2019re not unfaithful. The nanny thing could have played with that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou could have had a fling with a nanny!\u201d says Colman, excited. \u201cOr I could. Dammit!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMissed opportunity,\u201d says Cumberbatch, with the hint of a grimace.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n Jay Roach<\/a>, the director of The Roses, has the calm smile and open gaze of a couples therapist \u2013 which is what he wanted to be, if his movies (including Meet the Parents and Austin Powers) hadn\u2019t taken off. \u201cI take on projects to work my own shit out,\u201d he says. \u201cI really am fascinated by what makes a relationship work or what dooms it.\u201d<\/p>\n The Roses also betrays his interest in the special relationship between the US and UK. \u201cI\u2019ve always had an inferiority complex,\u201d he says. \u201cBut especially around British people. They are so much wittier and more articulate. Olivia and Benedict are hilariously dark and insulting, even off camera.\u201d<\/p>\n In the film, Ivy and Theo\u2019s brittle banter contrasts with the sometimes spectacular frankness of their American friends, two couples played by Andy Samberg and Kate McKinnon, Jamie Demetriou and Zo\u00eb Chao. \u201cWhen Ivy and Theo are really harsh with each other, they\u2019re sort of speaking in their love language,\u201d says Roach. \u201cWhen Americans try, they suck at it.\u201d<\/p>\n Both Cumberbatch and Colman are popular across the Atlantic. Both are also perceived as quintessentially British \u2013 a sense cemented by Colman\u2019s best actress Oscar<\/a> acceptance speech. (\u201cBrilliant!\u201d says Cumberbatch, who raises it unprompted. \u201cLike Olivia mach 11.\u201d)<\/p>\n Classicism has given us this sort of romantic ideal of love, which is impossible to live up to. Those two things wrestle: it\u2019s great to fall in love, but eventually one of you will be dog-tired and doing the bins<\/p>\n \u2014 \u00a0Benedict Cumberbatch<\/p><\/blockquote>\n He\u2019s perhaps more of a fan of the US than she. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to stay in your lane over there,\u201d he says. \u201cYou can keep evolving.\u201d He talks about how \u201chistory speaks to a more nefarious version\u201d of the idea that Britons are refined and Yanks brutes.<\/p>\n He also questions the charge levelled by the film that Americans don\u2019t get irony. \u201cIt taps into that cliche: that Brits say to each other things that are really quite cruel, cold and barbed \u2013 and Americans just think it\u2019s funny. But maybe that\u2019s changed. Look at the roasting thing …\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ve taken it so far,\u201d says Colman.<\/p>\n \u201cBarbarically cruel. Not at all epigrammatic.\u201d<\/p>\n Do they soften their own swearing outside England? \u201cOh I go much worse,\u201d says Colman. \u201cMy first time in America, my lovely team went (nervous American accent), \u2018Um, I know you like the c-word. We can\u2019t do the C-word here.\u2019 And then the LA Times asked me about David Tennant and I said, \u2018Oh, total c**t!\u2019 You could see everyone\u2019s colour just draining. It\u2019s because I was told not to.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s that school thing, isn\u2019t it,\u201d says Cumberbatch.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah,\u201d she says, \u201ceverybody wants to say \u2018c**t\u2019. It\u2019s a great word.\u201d<\/p>\n There are limits though, even for Colman. Some years back, she was bathing her train-mad young son and spelling out words for him in foam letters on the tiles. He requested \u201cFat Controller\u201d, per Thomas the Tank Engine. She\u2019d got as far as \u201cfat c\u201d when her husband appeared, alarmed. \u201cIdiot! I\u2019m not gonna write \u2018fat c**t\u2019 on the bath!\u201d<\/p>\n The pair potter off on a tangent, rhapsodising over Brio (Colman: \u201cThe bridges!\u201d; Cumberbatch: \u201cSo satisfying\u201d) and comparing notes on classics of children\u2019s literature that seem less palatable when you\u2019re a parent.<\/p>\n [\u00a0A biopic of Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor? There are reasons to want what we haven\u2019t yet gotOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n \u201cI had a little squiz at the Mr Men books,\u201d says Cumberbatch. \u201cAnd oh my God! Mr Chatterbox is basically gagged and laughed at by the postman. Can you imagine teaching a child that\u2019s acceptable? Just shut someone up with a mask.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd Mr Nosey!\u201d says Colman. \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t be nosy, but they sort of hurt him.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of consent issues with Mr Tickle.\u201d<\/p>\n The series should be repurposed as teaching aids, Colman suggests. \u201cEveryone gets a red flag and waves it when they spot inappropriate behaviour.\u201d<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n Both Colman and Cumberbatch are in notoriously happy marriages. She\u2019s been with the writer Ed Sinclair since university. They have three children, as do Cumberbatch and his wife, theatre director Sophie Hunter. Do they think we romanticise love?<\/p>\n \u201cBy its very nature, yes,\u201d says Cumberbatch. \u201cAnd I think that\u2019s fine.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI love love,\u201d says Colman, cheerily. \u201cI like to romanticise love. I think it\u2019s ace.\u201d<\/p>\n Cumberbatch leans back. It\u2019s a bit of a format, this: she says something chirpy and succinct, he expands on it thoughtfully, prodding the other side of the coin.<\/p>\n \u201cClassicism has given us this sort of romantic ideal of love,\u201d he says, \u201cwhich is impossible to live up to. Those two things wrestle: it\u2019s great to fall in love, but eventually one of you will be dog-tired and doing the bins.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then you take turns,\u201d says Colman briskly, \u201cand step up to the plate.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Olivia](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/ZIPZT4U63ZHRZRTCT7G6RRQPWM.jpg\")
Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch play a picture-perfect married couple. Photograph: Searchlight Pictures\/Jaap Buitendijk <\/p>\n\n
![\"Olivia](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/K2OA5QXKBZMVZUHIFGA3B7UOYY.jpg\")
Olivia Colman as Ivy Rose and Allison Janney as Eleanor, Ivy’s divorce lawyer, in The Roses. Photograph: Searchlight Pictures\/Lara Cornell <\/p>\n
![\"From](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/LJY43RKREHGYFWCXY7NLMTO2RU.jpg\")
From left: Sunita Mani as Jane, Olivia Colman as Ivy Rose and Ncuti Gatwa as Jeffrey. Photograph: Searchlight Pictures\/Jaap Buitendijk <\/p>\n