In the rolling process, the imposed pressure is used to make the contacting surface of two different metallic materials form a stable joint surface due to the extreme plastic deformation. The quality of the interface strength is super important for many engineering applications. The metallic surface treatment technology is usually adopted to control the interface morphology to improve rolling quality. This paper mainly demonstrates the influence of interface morphology (e.g., the amplitude of surface roughness, grinding cycle and sheet-metal geometry) on the shear strength of the rolled copper-aluminum composite. The mechanical mechanism of the rolling deformation is analyzed thoroughly by theoretical analysis and numerical simulation. Compared with the experimental data, it is concluded that the rolling quality is possible to be effectively improved by controlling the amplitude and wave length of surface roughness in a certain range. Our study paves a systematic way to control the quality for metallic-composite plate rolling, especially for large-scale plate in industrial practice.