The stars of “The Roses” stopped by the New York Times studio kitchen to toss pies and share stories from their lives in food and film.
Benedict Cumberbatch, left, and Olivia Colman in the New York Times studio kitchen.Taylor Miller for The New York Times
Welcome to the Pizza Interview, a new series from The New York Times Cooking where the Q&A has a catch: Our guests have to make pizza.
In “The Roses,” Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman star as Theo and Ivy Rose, a picture-perfect British couple starting fresh in California. Theo thrives as a successful architect, while Ivy struggles to keep her quirky restaurant, We’ve Got Crabs!, afloat. But when Theo’s career suddenly falters and Ivy’s restaurant becomes an unexpected hit, the Roses’ carefully planned lives spiral into chaos.
Watch the full video below (or on YouTube) and read ahead for excerpts from the outtakes, which have been edited and condensed.
By The New York Times Cooking
Have you ever made a pizza before?
Benedict Cumberbatch: Yes.
Olivia Colman: Yes. [coughs]
Cumberbatch: She’s lying. The truth tells in the throat when someone lies.
Colman: I got so excited I inhaled my own spittle. Yes, I have made pizza before. At home, for fun. Have you?
Cumberbatch: At someone else’s home, for fun, and in a place I was staying in Italy.
Colman: Oh, nice! Proper.
Do you like to cook?
Colman: I do like to cook. I can follow a recipe.
Cumberbatch: Same. I love cooking.
Colman: You’re probably much better at it than me.
Cumberbatch: I like The New York Times Food recipes. Actually, I stayed with Wes Anderson, and he would get recipes off New York Times. We stayed with him because it was during Covid, and we wanted to keep a bubble. Our food was pretty much from The New York Times.
What’s your favorite pizza place?
Colman: There’s a place in Peckham in London called Made of Dough, which I like very much.
Cumberbatch: There’s a great pizza van on the Isle of Wight, which I like very much. Yard Sale. Pretty hard to beat. It’s a London pizza hut … pizza store. Sorry. Pizza … what do you call it?
Colman: Pizza restaurant.
Cumberbatch: Pizzeria.
If the two of you opened a restaurant, what would it be called?
Colman: Bene-Col. Which is a medicine isn’t it?
Cumberbatch: Colbatch. We could come up with much ruder amalgamations of our names.
Have either of you worked in the food industry?
Colman: I was a waitress. I was always enthusiastic. Not necessarily the best at it. Also, people laugh when they come to my house, and I offer them a tea or a coffee or something. It takes hours for me to remember. And then we laugh about how rubbish a waitress I must have been.
Cumberbatch: I’d have liked to be waited by you. I think it would have been a giggle.
Colman: Yeah! Fun. You might not get what you ordered but, you know.
Cumberbatch: I worked in a restaurant around the corner from my mum and dad’s called Arcadia, and Vincent, the very sweet manager, allowed me into his kitchen. God bless him. I was a sous-chef for about four months, and I did lots in catering, but that was just silver service and waitering and standing at the sort of events that we now go to for our film openings. So I have a lot of love and empathy for the young wannabe actors standing there with a tray.
Olivia, did you have to learn a specific cooking skill for this role?
Colman: No, because they have amazing food people who make everything look pretty. And then I turn up and do that [mimics plopping something down on a table] with it. Only the little montage-y bit with Ollie Dabbous, he showed me how to make it look like I could drizzle oil.
What’s your signature dish when you’re cooking for your family?
Cumberbatch: Roast chicken.
Colman: Yes, a Sunday roast.
Cumberbatch: We both like baking, I’ve learned. Your tarte Tatin is apparently a winner. I like doing this really nice recipe from a little cafe in North London called Ginger and White. They had a little cookbook, and it was this really nice lemon drizzle pistachio cake.
If you were a food dish, what would you be? Can you answer for each other?
Cumberbatch: You’d be banoffee pie. Can’t go wrong. Sweet and lovely.
Colman: I think you might be dauphinoise potatoes.
Cumberbatch: Ooh, yeah. Classy but also comforting.
Colman: Comforting and posh. I don’t mean posh, but posh as in special.
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