‘The Roses’ Excellent Writing And Cast Deserve These Fabulous Costumes

“I don’t remember one bad day in prep, in shoot, in wrap,” costume designer P.C. Williams told me. We met over Zoom earlier this week to talk about her latest film, Searchlight Pictures’ The Roses. The film was directed by Jay Roach from a screenplay by Tony McNamara, and it opens in theaters today, August 29, 2025.

“Reading Tony’s scripts and talking to Jay Roach,” Williams said, “who is just a phenomenal man, and he might not officially know it yet, but he is my mentor and will hopefully continue to be my mentor for the rest of the time that I’m on this planet. He is so good. Getting to work alongside Jay and Michelle Graham, his producing partner, and joining this group of people who are all so brilliant and so seasoned, it was an amazing experience. I learned so much about my craft and I think that comes from having the support of people like Jay, Michelle and Tony, and their constant attitude that no question was too small.”

I asked the designer if there was an example she could share, I love stories about people working well together, we are so inundated with horrors racing in the opposite direction. I think we are all hungry for proof that there are lots of people out in the world, waking up every day and trying to do good.

“I remember once Jay sent an email out about a scene,” Williams told me, “that we were shooting in a couple of days, and he sent it to all the heads of department. He was like, ‘Listen, this is my feeling about the scene and I want to do X, Y and Z, but I just wanted to open it up to the floor in case anyone else had any ideas.’ And I thought, this is someone who understands that the best parts of us are even greater when we’re combined.”

The final result is proof of what Williams was telling me. This is a very good movie, and it is a fun film to watch.

Based on Warren Adler’s 1981 novel (and the 1989 film adaptation directed by Danny DeVito, and starring Kathleen Turner, Michael Douglas and DeVito), The Roses is a very dark comedy. The writing is unusually good, and made by a whole team of brilliant people who very obviously enjoyed working together. Oddly enough, in a world rich in streaming options, it is not often that we are treated to a film that is both extremely stylish and exceptionally well written. The Roses is both of those things, and as is always true about high-quality filmmaking, the costumes add multiple layers of depth to the storytelling.

The Roses are a couple, Ivy (Olivia Colman) and her husband Theo (Benedict Cumberbatch), and they have been together since the Earth cooled. The Roses have twin 13-year olds, athletes, Hattie (Hala Finley or Delaney Quinn when younger) and Roy (Wells Rappaport and Ollie Robinson when younger.)

At the beginning of the story, dad is the breadwinner and things seem mostly ok. Very, very quickly this changes, suddenly mom is a global sensation with a line of seafood restaurants, and even though this means they are a much more financially stable family, chaos ensues. Things begin to devolve, then snowball into absurdity, and by the time it all comes to a close, the idea of ‘Chekhov’s Raspberries’ will make complete and total sense.

Though Ivy and Theo have children, and probably an extended family out there somewhere, this movie is really about the two of them. As individuals and as a couple; who they were and who they have become. When I was watching the film, which I did twice in a row the night before our conversation, I kept seeing ways that what Ivy was wearing reflected her mindset, whatever that was, as the story progressed. I was curious, because such things never just happen, they are always the result of careful and diligent work. So, did Williams begin by thinking about them as a unit? As separate people?

“I started off by approaching them as individuals,” the designer explained, “because they’re on this journey as a couple, but actually their individual journeys are as important to the story as their marital journey. It was really important to me, when starting the design process, to understand who Ivy is, and then understand who Theo is, and then work out how they sit together. How do they overlap as they swap places, and how do they get to where we end up. You know, Ivy being a chef is a creative job, and I don’t think that a lot of people necessarily understand that side of it , because everyone can cook, right? I think that understanding the art form of a chef, and how that might reflect when she’s at home with the kids, her costumes reflect that she’s still creative, she’s still quirky. The clothes have an artisanal quality to them, but it’s for that space. It’s for a space which feels homey, which feels comforting, and as she transitions into boss, it’s taking all the things that she loved, from what she was wearing that made sense at home, but which make sense in the workplace.”

Ivy’s professional growth is a big part of this story, and to design costumes that evolved as the character did, Williams thought about her own wardrobe choices, how important it was that the clothing reflected Ivy’s personality and the confidence with which she does literally everything.

“When we were thinking about Ivy’s professional costume,” the designer told me, “she’s not going to go from wearing printed coloured shirts with her apron from home into wearing chef’s whites. I can imagine Ivy absolutely hating it. When we did the photo shoot with her with the little crab, it was like, ‘okay, this is for this photo, now get me out of it, let me get my real clothes on.’ So, it’s like, how do we enable the costumes to reflect who she is, but also where she is?”

Because Ivy is busy empire building, this infusion extends beyond her person and into her business. It is very easy to believe that her outsized-but-intuitive vision would become an immediate success.

“Part of it is the fact that at her restaurant, the uniforms are really chill,” Williams said. “They have these denim aprons, with rope as ties, rather than anything that’s super processed, super heavy, or even trying to be Michelin starry. They know what their product is, they are friends hanging out, enjoying cooking, enjoying hosting, and this is a spot where when you come in, you feel like you’ve come somewhere familiar. I think she decided not to go down the super traditional line for her staff because that is part of her way of keeping it feeling like Ivy.”

Ivy favors a boxy silhouette, she loves loud and/or contrasting patterns, and though mostly this does not change as her ascendency progresses, she does lose volume, another obviously purposeful decision I had to ask about.

“The smaller shapes mean that there is less physical space for her to break down in,” Williams told me, and bit, did that simple insight feel profound.

“Before,” she continued, “ it felt like there was space for her to be able to come undone. In the same breath, there is more confidence in her later wardrobe, because there’s more confidence in herself. And maybe this marriage isn’t necessarily working, and maybe they’re deeply unhappy, but there is a joy that comes from finding out who Ivy is, outside of being a wife and a mum.”

The couple that Ivy and Theo are closest to are his best friend Barry-the-real-estate-attorney (Andy Samburg) and his wife Amy (Kate McKinnon). Slightly younger than the Roses, definitely more Theo’s people than Ivy’s, the pair makes a brilliant addition to every scene that either or both supporting actors are in. Almost foils to our main characters (definitely foils in the comedic sense), the two characters wear extremely similar wardrobes, which I knew immediately was an indication of a fascinating, behind-the-scenes story.

“Anyone else reading those lines would be okay,” Williams said with a grin, “but Andy reading them, like, there is something about that man that is so incredibly special. And he comes into the space with zero ego. When we worked together on what his costume would be I presented the idea of this very particular guy from this particular part of California that we’re meant to be in. He is the trekking guy, going trekking in the latest sneakers and gear, totally a Patagonia Bro. I loved having him alongside someone like Kate, whose character is also a Patagonia bro, but she just happens to be female. The two of them together, it’s like these two Patagonia bros, you can imagine them camping with a cold brew and like talking about everything and nothing and actually making no sense. Like, that is what they were. I thought it was really interesting to explore that idea in a female character.”

McKinnon, who is objectively a genius and a National Treasure (like, can we please get Nic Cage to protect her?), who seems to make a point of blending herself, at least a little of herself, into the characters she portrays and this particular character gains so much from the actresses physical comedy skills.

“I think it’s Kate bringing in her personal experience as a Queer woman into this space and seeing how we can marry that with this character,” Williams told me when I asked her if I was on the right track with my interpretation.

“Amy is kind of like Ivy, she’s in an exploratory part of her life,” the designer explained. “And the obsession with Theo and the idea that they’re opening up their marriage, there are lots of little hints that Tony so brilliantly writes. She’s exploring, and Kate and my discussions were about what she was exploring. We never answered it, but we thought a lot about the idea of exploring for her.

McKinnon brought photographs with her to the meeting for reference, images of outdoorsy Queer women from the 1970s and 1980s, including some photos from Woodstock. And apart from the (hilarious) dinner party scene, I learned, every item of clothing for Amy was thrifted.

“They were women out in nature, just like being and existing,” Williams said. “And some of those references fed right into where we went with Kate’s costume. And actually Kate’s costume of all of the costumes probably had the biggest transition from where I initially started before I’d had a conversation with Kate to where we ended and where we ended is something that I’m so proud of because like, let’s be honest, some of those costumes are pretty ugly. But like, that is what makes them so great. Finding all of those thrifted items that we cobbled together to make outfits, for this woman who’s just in this continuing state of discovery alongside her slightly clueless, but totally adorable, husband she is in love with.”

I cannot understate how well all of this works, it is all rather lovely, even when the narrative hits its thematically darker points. Though to be fair, when things get really bad, we get Allison Janney. And I am not the only one starstruck by her majesty.

“Honestly,” Williams said with another gorgeous, enormous smile, “I fangirl hard over Allison Janney. I remember like when she got cast and being like, ‘oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.’ And when we had her in for a fitting, we had all these outfits for her to try on, and she just stands for a picture and she just looks like a 1920s French illustration for Vogue.”

Janney is Eleanor-the-competent-attorney, once the Roses decide that divorce might be best, poor idiot Theo goes with his BFF. (When Theo asks Barry if he can handle a divorce, his buddy replies, “Divorce is mostly about real estate.”) The ‘Pandora’ dress Eleanor wears (“navy blue, flou, bubble jacquard”) to their divorce “mediation” feels very 1940s inspired, which sort of implies perfect for war, and was designed by Edel’ine Lee, the eponymous brand of a graduate of Central Saint Martins which was founded in 2014. Lee is known for incorporating elements of performance art into the exhibitions for her collections which made Williams’ choice of dress perfect; exactly what Eleanor would have worn in real life (if she was a real human) and the ethos behind the company aligns with the content and message behind the film.

“That dress,” Williams shared, “was stunning, it was so beautiful. When we were shooting that scene, it was Allison Janney and Olivia Coleman, two Oscar winners, Andy Samberg, one of America’s funniest comedians, Benedict Cumberbatch, a national treasure for the UK, all at the top of their game performing. I literally felt like I was 11 years old. I was like, I can’t believe this is the life that I get to live. Tony is a lyrical genius. That man and words are just insane. And then you put him with these incredible comedians who say what he’s written on the page, and then they start to riff, and you’re like, whoa, like in that scene at the dinner with Kate, when she’s talking about the surrogate, the amount of different alts she did and each one was just as audacious as the next. And you’re like, oh my God, this is gold.”

Remember how, back when people still bought movies on DVD, a movie would come with additional content like outtakes? Well, someone needs to make that happen again because this writer very much needs to see the outtakes for the dinner party scene in The Roses. A lot. Searchlight Pictures’ ‘The Roses’ is now available in theaters nationwide. You will very much want to go see it.

At the risk of becoming tedious, one of the worst ways I could ever fail my lovely readers, let me repeat something important one last time. Whenever a character wears an excellent costume, in literally any format of any genre of storytelling, onstage or on film, and the clothing feels like a perfect choice, that fleeting instant was the result of a ton of hard work.

For the tiniest slivers of time, designers like P.C. Williams give their all. They have vocations more often than careers or jobs. And Williams, like all the greatest costume designers in Hollywood, does her work knowing that the goal is for it to fit seamlessly into a production, not standing out for any reasons, good or bad.

When this magic happens, as it does time and again throughout The Roses; when the clothes easily convince the audience that the characters just woke up that morning and picked out something to wear, please know that this is the result of hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of work.

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