opposite Sellers in the original Pink Panther and [[The Magic Christian (film)|The Magic Christian]], has a small part in the film as Smith's butler, and Steve Franken, who played the tipsy waiter opposite Sellers in The Party, returns as an FBI agent. Unlike other Fu Manchu works, Fu's daughter Fah Lo Suee, and Nayland Smith's friend Dr. Petrie do not appear in the film. Production In 1976, Robert Kaufman was writing the script for Fu Manchu to star Peter Sellers and Michael Caine. Production was troublesome before filming started, with two directors—Richard Quine and John Avildsen—both fired before the script had been completed. Sellers also expressed dissatisfaction with his own portrayal of Manchu with his ill-health often causing delays. Arguments between Sellers and director Piers Haggard led to Haggard's firing at Sellers's instigation and Sellers taking over, with his long-time friend David Lodge directing some sequences. The filming days were quite tense, with Sellers intervening in practically the entire production of the film, despite his health problems. Haggard later recalled: It was a very disagreeable experience on that film. I was brought in on an off-chance. He [Sellers]'d agreed to do a fairly stock Hollywood comedy thriller, similar to The Pink Panther really, playing a detective and a villain. And he'd fallen out of love with that project and didn’t want to do that script. They said, 'Okay, what do you want to do?' and he said, 'Let me go off and do a bit of rewriting.' So he went off with a Hollywood hack and turned it into a series of Goon Show sketches. The executives were absolutely appalled. They thought, 'Oh my God, we thought he had a picture and now we’ve got a development situation.' I knew one of them, so they said, 'Maybe this guy Haggard could do something with this.' So I got three weeks' work to supervise a rewrite, which we did. We made Peter’s script much more coherent, turned it into something with a bit more of a beginning, middle and end. And they were very pleased with that so I got the gig. But then unfortunately within about two weeks my love affair with Peter Sellers was over but I had to soldier on. I did soldier on but it was no fun, absolutely no fun. Then just towards the end of the shooting he decided, which had been obvious, that either