Interview: Jay Roach and Tony McNamara on Going to Darkly Comedic Places in ‘The Roses’ and the Viability of the Theatrical Comedy
Director Jay Roach (Meet the Parents) and Oscar-nominated writer Tony McNamara (Poor Things) had never met before collaborating on a remake of the dark comedy The War of the Roses. But like the first encounter between The Roses protagonists Ivy (Olivia Colman) and Theo (Benedict Cumberbatch), they immediately bonded over their sense of humor.
“I didn’t know Tony that well, I didn’t know what his deal was or why he was doing what he was doing, [yet] we instantly started laughing at each other,” Roach says of the first time they met in-person. “Comedy people really love to collaborate and talk and try to make things better. And I felt like that’s what we did the minute we met.”
That shared love for a laugh is the glue that holds Ivy and Theo together in the film, even as their lives are thrown into disarray. This newest take on War of the Roses once again follows a seemingly perfect couple that have it all together, with Ivy and Theo settling down and starting a family while continuing their own ambitious careers. But after a public humiliation leaves Theo and his architect career in the gutter, Ivy’s local restaurant becomes an overnight sensation. As Ivy’s rise to fame leaves Theo raising the kids on his own, the two drift apart and find their love language replaced by constant insults and verbal warfare.
Below, Roach and McNamara break down their unique creative collaboration, the importance of writing with actors in mind, and why they hope their Searchlight Pictures release might remind audiences of the beauty of going to see a comedy in the theater. This interview has been edited and condensed.
Matt Minton: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. To start, I’d love to hear how you both discovered the ‘80s source material, The War of the Roses, and what you wanted to bring to the story now in 2025.
Tony McNamara: Originally, Benedict [Cumberbatch] and Olivia [Colman] sort of had this idea. I was like, “I don’t want to do a remake, but I want to work with those two.” I thought about re-imagining it into a comedy about marriage and, stylistically, a verbal sort of comedy, sort of a Howard Hawks, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf-type because that would suit those actors. Then it becomes more about how you hang onto a marriage than the original, which was a divorce, physical-farce type — which was amazing! And I didn’t want to try and redo something that had always been done so brilliantly.
MM: Jay, how did you get involved with the project? Especially knowing your history of directing family-centered films with large ensembles like Meet the Fockers, and being able to bring that sensibility to this project.
Jay Roach: It was a little different from anything I had done. I knew Benedict and Olivia were involved and I’ve always wanted to work with them. I was just getting to know Tony right around the same time I read the script. I liked, what you’re getting at, is that it challenges your conceptions about your own relationships and how you might take things for granted or miss opportunities to let somebody know how you really feel because you’re so distracted by your career or other aspects — even raising the kids can distract you from your romantic quests. As Tony has said, it was still about divorce, and divorce is still a very dangerous predicament, but it’s also about marriage, and I did always love those old remarriage comedies like The Philadelphia Story and Adam’s Rib and those Preston Sturges type things. I saw that in what Tony was up to. It was a chance to try something a little bolder for me because it had such a tonal range from very, very funny outrageous comedy to very, very dark, painful, tragic elements.
MM: I’d love to hear more about your creative collaboration. Especially you Tony, having worked on films like Poor Things and The Favourite with elements of power struggles and Jay, as I just mentioned, the bigger ensemble pieces you’ve directed. How did you blend together your skillsets to bring this project to life?
TM: We had met about something else, and it was very clear we got on really well. As soon as we started working together, it was like — we’re comedy people deep down. All of our movies have empathy and a sort of humanity to them, even if they’re viciously funny or ridiculously savage. At the bottom, we both believed in a heart for the movie and the characters. Comedy people really love to collaborate and talk and try to make things better. And I felt like that’s what we did the minute we met.
JR: I’m not that religious, but that’s a religion I really believe in — the human ability to reach across. I didn’t know Tony that well, I didn’t know what his deal was or why he was doing what he was doing, [yet] we instantly started laughing at each other. That bond is precious and I think that is what happens in the film. You get a sense that these two characters care so much about each other because they instantly get each other’s sense of humor in that meeting scene in the kitchen. Even in the darkest times, that humor and ability to make each other laugh cuts through all the pain and tragedy. It gives you hope all the way through the end of the film that they might be able to make this work.
MM: I love that parallel between your humor meshing and how that’s mirrored in the two characters. It sounds like Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch were involved from the very beginning, but I’d love to hear about casting them and what made them perfect to play off one another in this dynamic relationship.
JR: Tony, you started it off with them.
TM: Their range is just incredible. They’re such brilliant dramatic actors and brilliant comic actors. Even though Benedict didn’t seem like he’d done a lot of comedy and was a bit nervous about that, I’d seen him in the first episode of Patrick Melrose. He was so bold comedically, and I was like, “You can do that.” And even Sherlock Holmes. In person he’s really quick, as is Olivia, so they had a range where I thought I could really go after something in this movie and make it super dark while being super funny.
MM: Olivia and Benedict are also attached as executive producers, so I’d love to hear what they specifically brought to the table as producers and how involved they were.
JR: They were all kind of around all the time. I know they were around in development. Searchlight might’ve had the idea to remake it because Fox controlled the original material, and they all worked with Tony. They were on the set, they were in post and it was a collaborative [experience]. That’s one of the things I benefitted from growing up in comedy is you’re always listening to everybody involved. Certainly, I was staying in tight with Tony and his sensibility, but I needed to absorb what the actors thought and what all of our collaborators thought. Searchlight had some great ideas and they pushed us. They knew it had to be great to live up to the expectations of doing a reimagining.
MM: That’s great to hear. Tony, I’d love to hear more about your writing process and building out the power struggle and imbalance in this relationship. The passage of time is interesting because we skip over many years as Ivy’s (Colman) career is taking off, and she’s missing out on family life. I’d love to hear how you approached the structure.
TM: One of the difficult things is massive passage of time in a movie. That took quite a bit of time to work out how many sequences and how much we had to see in each sequence, but at the core, I wanted two ambitious people who would love each other. What happens to them in the world is going to test that. And they’re not going to make great decisions at times. It’s going to be about how even if you really want to stay together, if you make enough bad decisions, it’s all going to come apart. I’m very language and rhythm-driven, so I wanted this really funny couple who got each other and spoke in a certain way, and then that language sort of being their strength and becoming their undoing. In the end, they don’t really have an emotional language, so their bantery, fun vibe becomes more and more vicious. And so that would escalate as the movie escalated, and you would see them sort of rip into each other. It always had to be a fun movie, even if it got very dark. I had all that in my head when I started.
With the passage of time, it was difficult to manage sometimes. I probably had more sequences and then I’d reduced it, and then coming up with the dinner party scene kind of made the movie sort of break into two halves, in a way. So that became, structurally, how I started thinking about it. Like all screenwriting, it was endless trial and error and hitting yourself in the face of the desk.
MM: Another fine line this film plays is being both an ensemble comedy and a true two-hander between Benedict and Olivia. That dinner scene you just mentioned, Tony, is a great example of the ensemble fully coming into play, and then going to a really dark place with Theo and Ivy. So Jay, how did you balance the cast, especially with these exciting supporting actors like Andy Samberg and Allison Janney, who make great appearances?
JR: I read that dinner scene and I didn’t even need to read the rest of the script. It was so complete, and there’s so much subtext, so many layers because you’re watching Benedict and Olivia, at first, just being among the group and trying to keep the banter alive. And then we just dial in more and more into their close ups of them facing off with each other while still pretending to be part of the merriment. Meanwhile, Andy Samberg, Kate McKinnon, Zoë Chao and Jamie Demetriou are starting to play with this whole idea of imitating their banter, and it starts to get outrageously funny. The language gets really interesting, but underneath, you still feel them just glaring at each other. You know that the knives are twisting across the table, and then it blows up. You get to that scene with just the two of them alone in that sort of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf almost showdown. It all happens within 10-15 minutes, and it’s all part of one whole. It’s like a play onto itself. With those actors and that variation in tone, that range in tone, it was one of the most exciting things I ever got to direct.
MM: The dinner table stood out to me when I was watching. Tony, when you were writing these supporting characters, how did you conceive of having these other couples to play off of Theo and Ivy? They are new additions to the story.
TM: That was an evolution of the idea that they had friends, and that became — maybe some of those friends should be couples. As Andy and Kate came aboard, we spent more time and they had thoughts. We created this couple that seemed like the most weirdo-couple at the start, but actually have a weirdly workable marriage by the end. We were always working on how to manage that. I wanted some other notes in the music, so to speak.
JR: That’s such a great character comparison. It’s almost like a barometer of how Benedict and Olivia are doing because you think their marriage is the one that’s on the rocks. Tony wrote the scene where Andy gives advice at the end of the couple’s therapy, and then the other one where Kate’s character comes to visit in the middle and says, “Yeah, my husband’s a pain in the ass, but I wouldn’t want anybody else to drive me to chemo,” or something. He wrote those off of their riffing. It’s, again, a great example of staying open to great talent and having Tony stay with us and write for these great actors. It was really a blast and a joy to see it evolve that way.
MM: It’s becoming increasingly rare in this industry to see comedies get wide theatrical releases. I know Naked Gun was a recent example, which was tonally very different, but a great comedy to support in theaters. With the support from Searchlight on The Roses, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the theatrical comedy, having this film get a big push, and if you feel hopeful for the future.
JR: It would be such a dream come true if this helped get people back in the habit of coming to see comedies. I remember pre-pandemic, just going to comedies every couple of months and laughing my ass off. I was lucky to be part of comedies, like I produced “Borat,” and watching audiences just go crazy when doing this naked fight that Sacha [Baron Cohen] does. I’m hoping that that becomes a trend again. Just getting people back into theaters seems to be a little easier for big action-y things, but I think people might enjoy being reminded how fun it is to just laugh together in big ways.
TM: Yeah, I think so. Your lips to God’s ears, as they say. It would be nice.
JR: We’ve seen it play in theaters in previews and it’s a blast, you know? People do really lose control of themselves from time to time. And that’s when I was like, “Wow, I remember what this was like. This is great!”
MM: And Tony, this is yet another delightful collaboration between you and Olivia Colman after she won the Oscar in 2019 for The Favourite. What has it been like seeing her career skyrocket even more after that and working with her again?
TM: When you’re a writer and you go on set and get to hear those people, who are so brilliant, say the dialogue — you’re sort of done. That’s enough for me. It really is like, what else do I want? Olivia is special to me because obviously “The Favourite” was a big thing in both our careers, and she was so brilliant. She’s so lovely as a person and just does the work, turns up and does it in this beautifully-hearted way where it’s a joy to watch her do it. She makes it look easy. Sometimes, she just dials in focus like that out of nowhere. Like that day when she did the one-on-scene when they’re alone after the dinner party. Usually she comes in and she’s very “Hi! Hi!” but she came in so in the zone. It was really something to see. It’s just working with people who are brilliant and make you look good, and who you also respect as people.
JR: I love how it made Benedict want to keep up with her, too. They were so great at pushing each other and pulling each other. Benedict was hilarious in this film, but also goes to just as dark a place.
Searchlight Pictures will release The Roses only in theaters on August 29.
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