Princesses and punch-ups: The co-star Orson Welles called “amateur”
The biggest stars tend to carry the biggest egos, and putting two notoriously forceful personalities together in the same movie can often yield combustible results, which led Orson Welles to tar a fellow legend of the silver screen with a derogatory brush.
Thanks to Eon Productions failing to secure the rights to the story, 1967’s Casino Royale was the second filmed version of the source material after the television special that had aired a decade previously, and the first unofficial flick featuring James Bond to release after the franchise had kicked off with Dr. No.
Gathering together a top-tier ensemble that included Welles, former Bond girl Ursula Andress, Woody Allen, David Niven, William Holden, and John Huston, it was reasonable to assume that something special was on the cards. However, the production could best be described as nightmarish, with one member of the roster infuriating Welles to no end.
For taking top billing, Peter Sellers was rewarded with a million-dollar paycheque, a brand new Bentley, and 3% of the box office takings, a deal that was virtually unheard of at the time. He also had a reputation for being a difficult customer on occasion, which regularly got him on the wrong side of Welles.
As one of the most talented comedic performers of his era and a maverick auteur respectively, Sellers and Welles had never been shy in making their opinions heard or trying to bend an entire production to their will, with the constant one-upmanship resulting in some seriously bad blood between the two.
There was already lingering tension, which was exacerbated by Princess Margaret stopping by the set, with director Joe McGrath revealing to The Oldie that Sellers felt slighted in the presence of royalty. “Princess Margaret came in and she did a curtsy to us all, and then we all bowed to her,” he said. “Then she passed Peter by and said, ‘Hello, Orson, I haven’t seen you for days’. She sat between Peter and Orson and spent the whole time talking to Orson. That infuriated Peter.”
After that, Sellers flat-out refused to appear in the same shot as Welles, even though McGrath reminded him that he was the one who’d requested the Citizen Kane director in the first place. When the filmmaker called the star out on his actions, it ended in disaster. “I said, ‘Christ, Peter you are behaving like a spoilt child,'” he explained. “Then he punched me in the face. So I hit him back.”
As a result of his buffoonery, Welles ended up branding Sellers as “the amateur,” which was a fairly accurate summation considering he walked off the set and never returned before principal photography had even concluded.
