‘The Roses’ Digital Release Interview: Director Jay Roach

Director Jay Roach joined Moviefone for a cooking class at  The Gourmandise School in Santa Monica as a celebration of the fact that Searchlight Pictures’ ‘The Roses’ is now available to buy on Digital.

Related Article: Movie Review: ‘The Roses’

Jay Roach Details Why Benedict Cumberbatch & Olivia Colman Were The Perfect Casting Choices For ‘The Roses’

(L to R) Director Jay Roach with Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch on the set of ‘The Roses’. Photo by Jaap Buitendijk, Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2025 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

When ‘The Roses’ came to Jay Roach, Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch were already attached to the project. He explains why they were the perfect choice to play this couple.

Jay Roach: I could just imagine them as a couple and they each have such specific personal mythologies and coping strategies and somehow Benedict’s enjoyable confidence and his comfort in his own skin, seeing that undermined by the story early and then seeing Olivia who’s so easygoing but then gets a little taste of success. I just somehow, with this great screenplay I got, and at the same time that they had developed and they had never worked together, I had a sense that they might get on and they might also have really excellent battles and conflict and the stuff that keeps you suspenseful like, oh how’s that gonna work out? So that’s how I felt about it. I’m such huge fans of both of them so it was a pretty easy equation to solve.

Jay Roach Explains What The Biggest Challenge Of Filming ‘The Roses’ Was

Jay Roach attends ‘The Roses’ home release event. Photo: Searchlight Pictures

With a movie like ‘The Roses’, there are a lot of aspects that go into it – including big fights that cause the couple to destroy things. When asked what the most important thing to get right was, director Jay Roach reveals it was the food.

Jay Roach: The most important thing for us was to get the food right. I wasn’t that much of a foodie but everybody around me were all foodies like, you can’t mess this up, make sure you get this food right. And so we just wanted to make it seem authentic that she really cared about the food as a whole, her restaurant’s growth and expansion is a big part of the story and so you had to believe that people would want to eat that great food. We had to shoot it in a way that made it seem delicious and we had a great food consultant, Ali Dhabu is an amazing chef in London and we shot in his restaurant. So we always had the comfort that we could pull it off. But I also found it interesting to then turn the food into a weapon sometimes. She throws cake, we have one crazy point, they end up spiking each other’s food, it’s an interesting primal thing. We all love food and we all love the sensation of great smells and great tastes but what happens when that turns into part of the battle, you know? And so that was the challenge.

‘The Roses’ digital release event. Photo: Dan Steinberg Photography.

What’s the story of ‘The Roses’?

Life seems easy for picture-perfect couple Ivy (Olivia Colman) and Theo (Benedict Cumberbatch): successful careers, a loving marriage, great kids.

But beneath the façade of their supposed ideal life, a storm is brewing –– as Theo’s career nosedives while Ivy’s own ambitions take off, a tinderbox of fierce competition and hidden resentment ignites.

Who is in the cast of ‘The Roses’?

‘The Roses’ director Jay Roach. Photo: Dan Steinberg Photography.

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