(Credits: Miramax / YouTube Still)
Sun 23 November 2025 9:30, UK
There aren’t many icons of comedy who have been quite as influential as Peter Sellers, and while audiences of today might be enamoured by the talents of Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, and Paul Rudd, they all built their careers on the foundation that Sellers established.
Sellers began his journey on the radio with The Goon Show, but it was his work on the big screen that turned him into a superstar, with his performance as Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther launching a massive franchise that saw many great actors taking up the mantle, even if they couldn’t quite match the original brilliance of the man’s work.
He was often a much more versatile and risky actor than he was given credit for, as he was willing to take on being in Stanley Kubrick’s disturbing satire Dr Strangelove, and the bizarre James Bond parody Casino Royale. However, it was his work in the underappreciated Hal Ashby film Being There that has grown into a cult favourite among many filmmakers and artists, including Lucy Liu.
Liu is clearly no slouch when it comes to comedy; she may best be known for breaking the mould for female Asian-American representation in action cinema, but she’s also nailed her more humorous roles in Set It Up, Kung Fu Panda, Stage Mother, and Shanghai Noon, which has seen her working with an eclectic set of comedy stars, although, as she told Rotten Tomatoes, she remains a fan of the older actor, calling Being There “brilliant”.
“I love how underplayed but so incredibly funny it was,” she said, “There’s something wonderful about the misconceptions that create the simplicity of all of it. The misconceptions create a simplicity which then creates this aura.”
Sellers might typically be known for playing eccentric, over-the-top characters, but Being There is ironically one of his quieter roles. He starred as the kind-hearted gardener Chance, who is forced to leave the townhouse that he had been tending to after its owner dies abruptly, and despite having little mental clarity and no means of extending conversation, he goes on a miraculous adventure as he baffles and bemuses everyone that he crosses paths with.
Physicality is an important aspect of performance that Liu certainly knows about, as she went through intense training regimes to perfect her action-centric roles in Kill Bill Vol 1 and Charlie’s Angels. However, comedy also requires transformative work, as a film like Being There wouldn’t have succeeded if Sellers had not been able to stay in character the entire time, wherein Liu correctly identified his underplaying of the role, because the film finds humour within the ways that Chance’s erratic behaviour is misconstrued as some form of wisdom.
As with many of Ashby’s films, Being There is also a deeper text that offers an insight into the human condition, with one of its most profound ideas being that of a shared humanity among everyone that remains unbreached by the barriers of age, language, or mental capacity, leading to the film being heralded at the time of its release, and Melvyn Douglas picking up the Academy Award for ‘Best Supporting Actor’.
Its reputation has only been strengthened by repeated viewings in the decades since, and while Liu has been on a winning streak lately with her great work in Presence and Rosemead, it remains to be seen if they will acquire a similar reputation as her favourite cult feature.
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