The Roses director Jay Roach: "Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Coleman were an instant no-can-refuse situation to me"

Every rose has its thorn. Just ask Theo and Ivy, whose marriage unravels after 15 years of incremental tension in The Roses; the latest film by veteran screenwriter Tony McNamara (Poor Things) and Hollywood comedy royalty Jay Roach (Austin Powers, Meet The Parents), based on the 1989 movie War of the Roses.

The premise is as follows: an ambitious couple, played by Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Coleman, leave London for America. Fast forward a few years and they’ve got it pretty handy, living in a white picket fenced house with two healthy kids.

The dynamic shifts when Theo loses his job and becomes a stay-at-home dad while Ivy’s restaurant takes off, distracting her from domestic life.

It’s a sharp, funny and devastating look at modern marriage. Cumberbatch and Coleman are excellent, witty when they need to be but flaunting their dramatic acumen when the film reaches its climax.

“It all began from them wanting to work together,” says McNamara. “Weirdly they never had, yet they were friends.

“Thinking about how to do the script, it was like ‘Well what are they great at?’ They're great at everything, but they're really great dramatic actors, so it can be super dark, and they're great comic actors so it can be hilarious and fun.

"There was a sense they were a couple who you would have empathy for in a really big struggle. What they bring to everything is this incredible technical, artistic ability. As a writer, they can say anything and it’ll be great.”

Roach agrees.

“Benedict and Olivia were an instant no-can-refuse situation to me,” the director says.

“I had met Benedict and hung out with him a little bit at one of my wife's music producer's places. He was so fast and funny, and willing to go to that dark British place, which I envy because I always wish I could do that.

“Everything you think you would assume about who Olivia is and how she is based on the films she’s in, she is all that. I couldn't wait to get them together.

“I knew they had not worked together. I was surprised, because they seem so made for each other, and their chemistry is so good. Their ability to riff off of each other and spark off of each other, not just in the comedy scenes, but the drama stuff too.

“It was like, ‘How does it get better than this?’And I'll tell you. You bring in Andy Samberg and Kate McKinnon, and this whole incredible supporting cast and you go, ‘Oh, it can get better!’”

Despite its Northern California setting, the film pulses with a dry, sarcastic and snarling sense of British humour.

“I love that kind of British banter-y repartee,” says McNamara. “They created a language between each other, a sort of love language. Taking them to America would show that they were ambitious, which was one of the flaws in their marriage in a way. Then they were stuck in a culture they mostly understood, but had a different language from.

“So they were stuck with each other. It would make it harder for them. The idea was to put them in a more pressure cooker situation.”

Neither McNamara nor Roach come from the UK, yet their comedy careers were shaped by it.

“You don't watch Australian comedies mostly, there aren't that many of them,” explains McNamara. “You're brought up on English and American comedies. We have our own sense of humour, but everything you're receiving is those two comic nations. So you end up with three senses of humour within you.”

“I grew up loving mostly British humour,” adds Roach. “The Pythons, Benny Hill and Hugh Laurie. All these amazing comedians. Then I ended up working with Sacha Baron Cohen, Douglas Adams and Michael Caine, and I got to know Helen Fielding really well.

“Mike Myers is the person that I channeled all that through, because obviously he played Austin Powers and he's Canadian. And like Australians and Americans, he was always outside of it, but craved it and envied it.

“I think in a way [being American] made me a little more qualified to do this, because there is a strong theme throughout this film of ‘the Americans’. The English people are the fish out of water and are bonded by that, but the Americans are in a constant state of envy and imitation.”

Nonetheless, Theo and Ivy have some modern American traits, including an obsession with professional success at the expense of their relationships.

Theo’s architectural magnum opus, a new nautical museum, is ripped apart during a storm. The same bout of bad weather funnels customers into Ivy’s restaurant, including a food critic, whose positive review sends her ‘We Got Crabs’ eatery on its way to becoming a national chain.

The couple's juxtaposing trajectories seeds resentment, posing the question: is it possible to chase your dreams without it hurting your family?

“Of course it is, but it's hard,” says McNamara. “Sometimes we're told we should be able to do it. But I think there's so much pressure now to be successful and ambitious, and being out in the world making it happen. That sometimes is at the cost of your intimate relationship.

“Success and failure is so important in a way that it wasn’t when I was growing up. Now, to be a failure is the worst thing in the world. Someone should write a movie about it…”

The film also plays with traditional gender dynamics. Ivy being the breadwinner, as Theo stays at home to rear the kids, raises more issues than when it was the other way around.

“What's interesting about it is [Theo] says early on that he’s happy doing it,” notes McNamara. “But then the outside world goes, ‘Oh, by the way, you're a failure’.

“Then he gets on a plane and someone goes, ‘By the way, you were a failure and people out there are succeeding and you should be embarrassed’, and he is.

“Both parents can do all of it. It’s just that on some level the male ego is more brittle around that stuff. The male ego is built into external success, so Theo found it harder than Ivy did to be the stay-at-home parent.”

“And I've had a long career trashing male ego,” laughs Roach. “ I think because I grew up in the 60s and 70s where it was like: how can we go forward as males? I got some sort of self-loathing male ego thing, so it's always funny to me.”

•  The Roses is in cinemas now. Watch the trailer below.