Peter Sellers still outsells actual desis

Peter Sellers outsold actual desis at the Emmy Awards last night. The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, an HBO biopic of the guy who made a career of mocking the desi accent, won three awards. Naveen Andrews was nominated but Lost.

“The Life and Death of Peter Sellers,” an HBO movie, won three awards early in the ceremony, including one for Geoffrey Rush as best actor…

“Lost,” which helped vault ABC’s prime-time ratings by fusing elements of the film “Cast Away,” “Survivor,” “The Twilight Zone” and even a dash of “Gilligan’s Island,” had received 12 nominations, including two for supporting actors – Naveen Andrews and Terry O’Quinn. (They lost to [William Shatner, for Boston Legal].) [Link]

Geoffrey Rush is a fine, fine actor, but it’s an interesting contrast. By the way, check out the chunni Barbara Hershey’s sporting. Stand by your man indeed.

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29 thoughts on “Peter Sellers still outsells actual desis

  1. who made a career of mocking the desi accent

    manish, he made a career mocking everyone, especially the french. you must have figured that out that i am a big fan of peter sellers and also, rudyard kipling.

    that hbo movie is pretty decent.

    mr. strangelove aka Inspector Clouseau

  2. On the Naveen Andrews nomination, is it a cop-out to say it’s nice at least that he got nominated?

    I remember with The English Patient at the Oscars, all of the primary other actors in the cast got nominated for best actor and supporting actor slots, but Naveen was shut out. He was even shut out of the marketing campaign for the film — which focused exclusively on Kristin Scott Thomas, Willem Dafoe, and Juliette Binoche.

    Here it looks like he’s getting noticed (and perhaps more importantly, marketed as an asset for the show). Then again, he is playing an ex-Iraqi soldier here (somehow a ‘hotter’ role than a desi minesweeper).

  3. somehow a ‘hotter’ role than a desi minesweeper

    Hello! did you see him washing his hair? Juliette Binoche did:)

    Anyways, I just started watching Lost (finished 3rd dvd) and I am liking it despite not getting any answers!!! Naveen is very good in it; he has very expressive eyes.

    I went to go rent it this weekend and being the nerd I am, I wanted the book that goes with the dvd too. I asked the video store clerk if he had the book toO; I heard him go in the back and ask the other employees:

    “Where’s the Lost book?” “What book?” “The LOST book” “When did it get lost? Who lost it? I didn’t lose it!” “No! The Lost book got lost!”

    Ha ha ha…That was fun, if not slightly frustrating to listen to.

    Loving the show so far, and Naveen is a very good actor. Too bad he lost.

  4. Over here, at least, Naveen Andrews is enjoying a bit of a badboy image after revelations he fathered a love child, Jaisal, with his Emanuel School maths teacher, beginning the affair when he was 16 and she was 31.

    The relationship appalled his parents, wrecked his teacher’s marriage and resulted in the birth of a child.

    Having read a bit more about it, it began to sound like the all-too-familiar strict Asian family driving the rebellious teenager away.

    The unlikely affair began in 1985, when Feakins offered to help her pupil with extra O-level tuition. At the same time, Naveen’s relationship with his late parents Stanley and Nirmala was deteriorating – they wanted him to abandon his dreams of becoming an actor and follow a “respectable” profession. They also wanted him to marry an Asian girl. “My father would call me a prostitute,” Naveen has since said. So Mrs Feakins invited him to stay at the cottage she shared with her husband in Egham, Surrey. One day Norman came home to find them in bed. “I had no idea – it was a bombshell,” he later said.

    Don’t send your son to Emanuel. Their cricket team’s lousy and their prop forward punched me in the face. And your son will knock up the maths teacher.

  5. Why so much talk about Naveen’s past? Can’t actors solely be judged for their acting!? They are putting themselves out there as characters, right? We don’t know them as real people!

  6. Why so much talk about Naveen’s past?

    Cos it’s fun? Nobody’s judging him on his extra-curricular exploits, it’s just celeb gossip. I was just making the point that when the biggest newspaper in Britain runs a story on a British star in a new big-budget US show he suddenly becomes hot property. The show benefits, his profile benefits, then his career probably benefits, we get some good TV and everybody’s happy.

  7. So did Andrew Dice Clay

    Manish,

    Wow what exemplary standards. This from someone who put ‘Freak-a-Leak’ lyrics on this blog.

  8. Yeaaah! He was born in Tooting! Get in son!

    He was an alcoholic and heroin addict with a young son from a frowned-upon relationship with his former teacher. He had poisoned relations with his parents and his career was barrelling into the sidings as he grew increasingly unreliable.

    We’re ALL like that in Tooting!

  9. Wow what exemplary standards. This from someone who put ‘Freak-a-Leak’ lyrics on this blog.

    You missed the point of the Andrew Dice Clay reference. I’m not at all offended by profanity in art, but rather by racism. See my Aristocrats review.

  10. “I think I pretty much blew it in London. It’s hard enough to be a wog, but as a wog who’s always difficult and disorganised, you’re really biting the hand that feeds you.”

    “What’s that wog show? The Kumars – is that the way people want to see Indians, pretending that they’re nothing? I find that incredibly offensive.”

    Can one of our UK mutineers explain Andrews referring to Indians as “wogs”? Sounds quite derogatory to call your own people that.

  11. Wog comes from the term ‘gollywog’ and was used initially against black people. But brown people got it chucked at them too, although I haven’t heard the word for years. I find it odd that he uses it.

  12. I thought wog stood for “Western Oriental Gentleman”??

    For the South Asian kids who were sent to the UK, pre-Independance, while still very young for that exemplary boarding school education and as a result acted/sounded/felt quite British. Brown pukka sahib. Always a derogetary term.

  13. The origins of the golliwog caricature and ‘wog’:

    There is some speculation that wog is an acronym for one of the following: Western Oriental Gentleman, Worthy Oriental Gentleman, Wily Oriental Gentleman, Wonderful Oriental Gentleman, or Working On Government Serive. The numerous variations and a lack of supporting evidence suggest that wog was not an acronym… Wog is both an ethnic slur and a racial epithet.
  14. BB and CC, yeah I thought “wog” sounded quite self-hating and dated, like something only a Western Oriental Gentleman would say to describe his brethren. 🙂

  15. … I thought “wog” sounded quite self-hating and dated…

    Sounds to me like he was using it sarcastically, like a black person using ‘n-‘ or ‘massa.’

  16. ASAS, don’t pull things completely out of context. He was asked along with lots of other celebs what he would change about himself and whilst they all said “ooh nothing” or “my nose” he said “Everything, I’d change everything. I’d be a six year old…caucasian boy”

    Don’t be pissed with him that they didn’t cast an Arab as an Arab, no need to call him names.

    Also generally not a good idea to start posts with “Damn Jews…”

  17. I always thought wog was basically an ethnic slur for South Asians in the UK. It was a sign they mattered there, they’d made it. a real live ethnic slur with bite that could get you killed! right on!

    I think Tjinder Singh had a song called Wogs Can walk or something?

    Asian Dub Foundation sound like they were hard core. we’ve never had that kind of thing here. i think desis were much more enthicisized in the UK than here

  18. Conershop had a song titled “Wog”:

    Get your fat ass off the acetate into Down twen’y stairs It came from the rest There, goes to rest in the heart “First I was a foreigner” Then suddenly “Everything (is) was cool forever”

    This Western OrientalÂ’s going full circle This Western OrientalÂ’s going full circle

    Last number recall Told me what you were up to Put the volume down on adverts To enthasis how sad they are Mar ships sexier And from all the above

    This Western OrientalÂ’s going full circle This Western OrientalÂ’s going full circle

  19. Actually, there was one good bit in The Party, like so: Some guy says to Birdie Num-Num, “Who do you think you are?”and Birdie Num-Num replies, “In India we don’t think who we are, we know who we are.” So that pretty much saves it for me.

  20. P.S. I recently met a well-known Desi writer of an earlier generation, while he was busy introducing himself at a party as a WOG, so I told him to call himself Desi, and he explained to everyone else that Desi means “native” so I gave up. He doesn’t get around that much any more, so I figured I might as well drop it.