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Olivia Colman in "The Roses."

In 'The Roses' A House Becomes a Battleground

Interiors

TSS Talent

Mark Ricker

In the remake of the 1989 divorce comedy, Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch star as a couple who go to war over their breathtakingly beautiful home.

“Divorce is mostly about real estate,” remarks Andy Samberg’s character in “The Roses,” and for warring couple Ivy (Olivia Colman) and Theo (Benedict Cumberbatch), that couldn’t be truer. In the stylish remake of the 1989 divorce comedy “The War of the Roses,” itself based on a novel, the two take the idea to delicious, dangerous extremes, refusing to let go of the cliffside modernist masterpiece they call home — and by extension, each other.

Theo pours himself into designing the house in hopes of rekindling both his professional reputation and his relationship with Ivy, who bankrolls the project thanks to her newfound fame as a celebrity chef. The result is a Scandinavian-inspired showpiece perched above the Northern California coast filled with sleek lines, warm woods, and smart-home flourishes that would make it the envy of any Silicon Valley CEO. As production designer Mark Ricker so succinctly put it while speaking to The Set Set: “It needed to be the kind of house two people would want to kill each other over.”

A photo from the set of "The Roses."
"The spiral staircase into the wine cellar became a giant corkscrew drilling down through the middle of the house." Courtesy Mark Ricker.
A photo from the set of "The Roses."
The house is imbued with elements that reflect the fragility of the couple’s relationship. Courtesy of Mark Ricker.
A photo from the set of "The Roses."
The house is built around a tree that is encased in glass. Courtesy of Mark Ricker.
A photo from the set of "The Roses."
The vaulted ceilings help the house look menancing at night. Courtesy of Mark Ricker.
A photo from the set of "The Roses."
Mark Ricker approached the project as if he were designing his own dream home. Courtesy of Mark Ricker.
A photo from the set of "The Roses."
"When the sun is out, it’s a very warm and inviting place." Courtesy of Mark Ricker.
A photo from the set of "The Roses."
The house was constructed in its entirety on a soundstage. Courtesy of Mark Ricker.
A photo from the set of "The Roses."
The kitchen — Ivy's domain — has some quaint touches. Courtesy of Mark Ricker.

The Academy Award-nominated production designer, who has previously collaborated with “The Roses” director Jay Roach on “Bombshell” and “Trumbo,” says that when he first read the script, the only note about the house was that it should be “contemporary” and “slightly Scandi.” With so much creative leeway, he found himself approaching the project as if he were designing his own dream home. “I really had carte blanche,” he says. “I started gathering references  — textures, colors, materials — that I loved, and before I knew it, I had designed the entire house.”

Benedict Cumberbatch in "The Roses."

Benedict Cumberbatch in "The Roses." Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

To create something on the grand scale he envisioned, Ricker and his team chose to construct the house in its entirety on a soundstage at Pinewood Studios in the UK, where the majority of filming took place (the South West coast of England is an uncanny double for Mendocino, it turns out). And despite its facade of perfection, the set is imbued with elements that reflect the fragility of the couple’s relationship. “The main staircase is cantilevered, so it looks like it was just teetering and on the verge of collapse,” Ricker explains. “And then the spiral staircase into the wine cellar became a giant corkscrew drilling down through the middle of the house. It was really fun to play with imagery like that.” Elsewhere, audiences may spot a wall that appears “already fractured” with holes, and even catch that the large window of the master bedroom is slightly askew. These design decisions, subtle at first, foreshadow the destruction to come and bring in a sense of unease as soon as the house appears on screen. As Cumberbatch said in production notes supplied by Searchlight, the design is “very, very wily stuff from Mark, because these funky and odd elements are essentially predicting where things will go.”

Ricker knew he was doing something right when an architect friend told him that a house like the one he had designed would never pass code because it’s too dangerous. “I told her ‘Exactly!’ I took her comment with a little glee, because it's like, well, that's the whole point.” He cites the 1920 German Expressionist film “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” as one of his reference points for the overexaggeratedly angular design and labyrinth-like layout, knowing that the film’s dramatic climax would happen at night. “When the sun is out, it’s a very warm and inviting place,” he says. “But once it’s dark and the lights go off, those sharp angles and shadows turn menacing.”

According to the screenwriter Tony McNamara, this duality is exactly why he made Theo an architect in his reimagining of the story: “They think the house is their saviour, and it’s not. In a way, it’s the climax of their ambitions.” For audiences, watching Ivy and Theo chase each other around the house, leaving deadly damage in their wake, serves as a reminder that the things we build to hold us together can just as easily tear us apart.

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