60 Minutes - Extended Interview: Sacha Baron Cohen

Episode Date: October 19, 2026

In an extended interview, Sacha Baron Cohen tells 60 Minutes about early influences, creating his iconic characters and why he brought back Ali G.

Okay, I want to start by going back to two moments early on, seeing Monty Python's The Life of Brian and Inspector Cluzo and the Pink Panther. Tell me how old you were when you saw the Pink Panther and what you thought about it? Pink Panther, I think, I think I was about nine. And I thought it was absolutely hilarious. And, I mean, Sellers is still my favorite comedian. Of all time. Yes, yeah.

Because he completely inhabited the character. And it's laugh, loud, funny, and they are silly voices. Yes. You know, my staff, when you boil it down, and I'll try and sound very pretentious later on, it's me doing silly voices. When you see Dr. Strangelove or you see Cluzzo, Sellers is gone. He's subsumed by the character. And I feel that way watching Bruno or Ali G or Borat.

I feel like you're not there. Do you feel like you bring any element of your actual self to some of the characters? If I knew who I was, then I could answer that. But I don't know. I mean, allergy definitely because in a way, at the age of 11, I was an allergy of sorts. How does a Jewish kid, you know, living a nice life think, okay, I'm going to bring my linoleum to Covent Garden and I am going to be break dancing. my mom is going to take me and I am how does that evolve?

Very simply I basically I remember it I saw one night on TV I saw somebody doing the robot it was two robots called tick and talk and I thought that's amazing and so I started doing it and then I started hearing music there were it was the beginning of hip-hop it was pre-hip pop it was was electro and it was the start of this new exciting movement. There was a lot more interesting than my actual life. And so I became obsessed by it. And so I would learn it. I had a few friends.

And they were into it too. And that's what we would do. We would go to the classroom with the slippiest floor. And we would teach ourselves how to break and pop. And then on the weekends, I would perform and go to Covent Garden and try and make money doing that. Uh-huh. And what was your home life like? Your mom was a fitness teacher? Yes. Your dad was a magazine editor turned accountant. Were they funny? Yes. Not both intentionally. My dad was an incredible wit and an amazing intellectual and very courageous.

He was the kind of wit where every single sentence was funny. And he would enjoy sparring with certain other witty people in the community. but where it would be literally a battle of wit. So every line is a joke. And also very serious, very intellectual, very political. And my mum was hilarious, but probably not intentionally so. Can you give me an example? Well, she has a voice like this. Sorry, if you're watching this.

And she had such a distinct voice that everyone in my high school could imitate it. So everyone would go, such a telephone, because that's what she would say when people would call me. She's a larger than life character. I mean, she's unintentionally hilarious and sometimes intentionally hilarious. The elements of Borat. In that, she would say whatever is on her mind. Because you see that same kind of Borat, like that winsome, you know,

she wouldn't harm anyone intentionally kind of feeling? Yes, ish. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Wild, amazing character full of love. And, you know, I grew up in a house full of love and where we were all told that we could be whatever we wanted to be. So tell me about seeing life of Brian.

Tell me, what does Monty Python do when you first see them? What does that do to you? Okay, so I believe it was an 18. And I think I was six, seven, eight. My brothers brought me into a cinema, and it was the first time that I'd been in this communal experience of hundreds of people laughing and screaming in shock. And I think, you know, I'm really not self-aware at all,

and I probably should get some therapy before I do one of these again. But I think in some ways my career is trying to replicate that experience. of just being in a theater with hundreds of people screaming with laughter. I didn't think I really understood the satire at the time, but I loved the experience, and I think that might be why I'm so obsessed with trying to get the audience to laugh as hard as they can, and I'm really, really obsessive about that. How was the entertainment at your Burmitsva?

The entertainment of my bar mitzvah was me. So I and my breakdancing partner just basically danced. And then my middle brother did the music. He's a musician. So that was that. He went on to study history at Cambridge University, where Baron Cohen discovered the stage. I realized I loved making people laugh,

but I also really like making them cry on stage. You like to give people the full emotion. I want to give them there. But yeah, bang for their buck. I really do. I do. How do your parents react when you finished Cambridge and you say, I think I want to be an actor?

They thought it was a ridiculous idea. It was just an impossibility. They were right. They were actually correct. Well, no. Well, it would have been irresponsible for them to support me because the likelihood of success seemed impossible.

So I gave myself five years to make it. What did I mean by making? it to have enough money to live, basically. You know, so I wasn't trying to become famous, but I'd go five years to make it. And you decide to devote some of those five years to going to the Harvard of Clown School with the famous clown teacher. Yes. Tell us about him.

Tell us about what you learn there. So I'm in Cambridge, and a guy comes back called Rick Warden, I remember this now, brilliant actor. And he says, I've just done this course. It's amazing. There's this guy called Philip Goliere, and there's this thing called Clown, and they put on a red nose,

and you just pretend to be an idiot. And it's incredible. His idea of Clown was the stupidest creature that can ever be on stage. He used to say, more stupid than this, and you die. Sorry for the cultural appropriation of the French accent. And what'd you learn?

Everything. Everything. was my mentor. Firstly, he gave me the confidence to carry on because he would sit down with everyone at the end and he said, you can do anything. And a lot of people he would tell them forget it. You can do nothing. Yeah, you could do nothing. It was brutal in that you'd have people flying from Australia that come and he'd say they would come on, he'd play this clown music with sort of the accordions. It'd stop and they would have to make him laugh. If they didn't make him laugh, he'd hit a drama and he'd go, sit.

And I wouldn't sit and I'd stay up sometimes for, and he'd let me stay up there sometimes for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, an hour. People were very resentful. But it was me experimenting being a clown. And it transformed everything. I've heard you say that you knew Ali G needed this whiff of ethnicity because then if he was just breathtakingly stupid, there was this possibility that people would chalk it up

to him being a member of the uneducated ethnic masses. Is that about accurate? Well, Ali G is a white imbecile. He's a cultural appropriator. He steals his language and his dress from his favorite music stars. So Tupac Shakur, that's why he does well. Westside and you know the Jamaican patois from Jamaican dancehold stars that he's listening to.

But so his full name is Alistair Leslie Graham, but yes, shortening him to Ali, there was the assumption that these members of the predominantly white establishment, where they were actually all white in those days, would assume that maybe there was some ethnicity there and that there were, prejudice might lead them to think that maybe he could actually be that stupid because of their own innate prejudice. Yeah. You know, but no, you know, I never wore any makeup. There was no, he never spoke about his ethnicity to them as well.

Other than later on, there were a couple of times where he said, is it because I was black? Yes. To our own Andy Rooney. To Andy Rooney. And I remember Andy Rooney saying, who's black? Yeah. Well, because I'm not wearing makeup. I'm clearly this white guy in the room.

The catchphrase, is it because I was black, sort of spread like wildfire through England. And it was completely impromptu. I was in this show called the 11 o'clock show. And I went to an environmental protest, and I jumped the barricades. There were police there trying to stop these environmental protesters. They're stopping this construction going on.

And this policeman stops me, and I said, is it because I was black? And we played it out that night to the audience and they B-B-themselves. Why? And this is my own sort of theory on comedy, right? So, which is the brain expects a certain line when you're saying a sentence. So when they hear the words, is it cos I is, they would expect white, tall, a man, wearing a yellow suit, the thing they're their least expecting the audience is black.

The brain suddenly has to go from there. It hears something over here, and that distance makes them laugh. I can't waste my time, hmm? Is it because I was black? You're black? Who's... Huh?

Who's black? Your eyes? Now, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't know. I don't have time. Do you remember a moment when you, approach some skateboarders as Ali G and they believed you were him. Can you describe that to me?

And was that a kind of breakthrough moment for you with this character? Yeah. So it was a breakthrough moment for me in my entire career, my life. So I wanted to be a comedian, but I was embarrassed to tell anyone that I wanted to be a comedian because it's a bit like saying, I want to be a supermodel, you know. Then people go, well, you're not actually very good looking. So you're not really good looking. So you're not to people.

It's a secret. So exactly. No one knows this. I was hosting a show called F2F, but I wanted to be a comedian. So I had this idea that in the breaks, you know, the one-minute break to get from this part of the studio to that part of the studio, we would cut to me doing a character. So I came up with this character called MC Jocelyn Chudel Hume. Yo, what's up, homie? This is MC Jocelyn Chudel Hume, making it real. He was this upper-class kid who did all the

the same catchphrases as Ali G. Buoyaka, but he was upper class, says, boiaka, you know, jungles massive. And I start skateboarding terribly and they go, you're crap, man, you're whack. After about five minutes, I went back to my real voice. I said, guys, I'm pretending. This is a character. They were shocked. At the end of the hour, I get called by the head boss. He says, if you try that again, you're fired. Oh, wow. And then I knew I was on to something. So the core idea of AliG was, I thought, would it be funny to have the world expert in something with the biggest idiot in the world? You know, would that juxtaposition be really funny if the world expert takes it seriously? Right. And apparently, yes.

When you called C. Everett Coop, the Surgeon General, a player hater, because he told you that you would definitely die at some point. Can you tell me what you remember about that interview? It was a fantastic interview. You know what I remember most clearly? Huh. Which is great for every interviewer out there. I kept telling him these stupid questions, like, you know, ain't the heart a bit crap. You know, shouldn't it have a different rhythm?

Because at the moment it's boom boom, boom, boom, but what about a... Then they would look after it and go, yo, this is me off. Respect it. No, you're way off base there. So you start doing LAG and people immediately are responsive. Yeah. But the thing, I find this so fascinating. The thing that makes him and you a household name is this controversy that erupts in the British press

about whether Ali G is a racist creation. Can you take me through the arguments on both sides of that and what you made of it? Okay, so at this point for the first five, six, seven years of my fame, I didn't give any interviews. So I never explained who Ali G was. Why? Because I didn't want to get into an interview situation. And the person go, wait a minute, I saw you give an interview.

You're this Cambridge educated middle-class Jewish guy. I wanted to do everything so that I could carry on doing Ali G. And secretly, I wanted to do BORRAT as well. So as a result, all the imagery facts. All the posters was me covering my face or just really close up stuff so that no one would recognize me. It was an amazing time because I became very famous, but nobody knew what I looked like. So I would be on the tube, the underground, hearing people talk about LG. They'd be sitting next to me.

Did it upset you to think that there was a contingent of society that thought you were part of something racist? Or did you just know they were wrong so you weren't worried? It was the worst insult you could give me. And so I was kind of desperate to go, guys, I want to tell her. And the rest of the team were like, just stay in character, just do the show. So, I mean, it's interesting that's also, it's interesting to clear these things up. Now, some people won't be convinced. Everyone's entitled to their own opinion.

I can only really explain how I came up with the character and what was intended. Yeah. And how, what his influences were. But this is the other thing about the beginning of the LG thing. So this was the first time people had seen a character with real people. Right. So I understand the criticism at the time because it's hard to conceive that this is a guy playing a character because no one was playing a character with real people.

This was a new form of comedy. Yeah. This was the undercover character comedy that I had tried to pitch. Yes. So obviously, thinking back at it now, you'd go, oh, that is. Sasha Baron Cohen. You know, Sasha Baron Cohen is this guy who's, you know, taking these phrases from rappers and, you know, rugger stars and that's not okay. They didn't realize I think that I was a guy playing this white idiot.

Well, because you'd created something new. Yeah, it was something new. And so when you create something new, it can either fail and it can be misinterpreted and it can work. Yes, shabash. I'm my name of all right. I like you. We talked a little bit about the origins of Borat. Tell me what's going on for you when you decide to make cultural learnings of America for make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan. I went to America.

And I had a meet with Jim Brooks, you know, create the Simpsons taxi legend. So I spent a couple of hours with him kind of four days in a row. and we kind of worked out how to do a sort of narrative structure with Borat and you know that was the dilemma was Borat going to be a scripted comedy and I was working with Matt and Trey from South Park they came up with a brilliant scripted thing

the three of us were working in this plot and it was Bill Friedkin who I had dinner with this legendary director and he said you've got You've got to make it in the real world. You have to do the core thing. Hello.

Thank you. We are actually live on the air right now. I am very excited. Yes. Hello, USA, I'm very excited. So when you're making Borat, obviously, you meticulously plan ahead. And it's not like you and your merry band of producers,

is just going into antique stores. There's a huge amount of stuff that you don't see, which is us behind the scenes, looking at who we were interviewing, going, they, not them, not them. Who is this lady you have shrunk? Was she the owner of this house that you camp in front of? And so the experiment was, we went into Fox and I said, you know, this is going to be a movie where real people move the narrative forward. and they are actually, they are unaware they're in a movie.

Now, obviously, I didn't believe that it would happen. I just thought, you know, I'm just going to say it. So they said, all right, try it out. You know, here's the money. It's $14 million. And the first scene came about, and it was Ballarat buying a car. You know, I want the wagon, you know. And they go, well, it's not exactly like that.

And this guy says, well, we don't have that, but what we, sorry, my accent's awful. But we do have this, and he points to an ice cream truck. And so I knew, I was like, oh, this is a bit in the movie where Borat comes into the movie, this scene, wanting that. And the real person shifts the story into something else. I was like, oh, wow, the theory works. You know, Borat is, again, a funny character, but also to, he also shows the kindness of people as well, who are so nice to him. but also can expose, you know, the layer of hate and bigotry below the surface that people normally wouldn't go on air and show.

Come on and make my day, Jew. I guess what I wonder is, have you felt conflicted or guilty about baiting someone into making a complete fool of themselves? Okay, well I think a lot of the times they're not making fools of themselves. I think a lot of those in the Ali G interviews they come across well actually. I think the same with Borat. We would often shoot in places that were famous for civil rights abuses. We'd go to Little Rock, Arkansas. We would go to Atlanta.

We would go to places where we felt we would find the kind of people whose views that we didn't agree with. Foss up! I'm Bruno. Do you think it's fair to say that what you're doing throughout all of your undercover work is you're putting these people through moral tests and the more spectacularly they fail them, the better it is for the movie, right? I think it's a variety.

I think all the characters work in different ways. Bruno exposes homophobia. And people respond to him differently than any of the other characters, right? Yes. So they all respond to all. So they're all designed to expose something. So Bruno is also about the vacuousness of the fashion world, you know, and the absurdity of it, getting people to contradict themselves.

Ah, this is in, this is out. So Bruno, I play this gay, Austrian flamboyant fashion reporter. And we wanted to show that homophobia could turn violent very easily. And at that point, we made it in 2009. made it in 2009, it was almost the last acceptable form of prejudice. These movies tend to be in genres, so I want to make it a rom-com. What normally happens at rom-com? The guy and the girl, he proposes to her in the big match, they kiss and everyone cheers.

Instead of that, we did it in a cage match. That is me and my love interest, and we kiss. And we wanted to see what would happen with the crowd. would they become violent, really? No, it seemed like they wanted to kill you. Yes. What's the sort of ratio of fear to thrill for you while that's happening? How much you worried about dying and how much you're thinking,

oh, my God, this is going to be the best scene? I'm thinking about the scene almost entirely in that moment. I mean, I can remember it vividly now. Yeah, well, I remember lying down and I'm kissing him and I'm looking at the chest. And I'm thinking this is great. Let's talk about the new movie for a minute. So after however many years of inhabiting Ali G, you step away from him for a long time, and now after 20 years of chilling, toking, and boning, Allie G is back.

A movie you directed called Who Is I? What has aging a couple of decades done to this guy? Absolutely nothing. So he is, he's the control experiment. So we brought him back to see how society had changed, really. So he is unchanged. immigrants are not coming here to mow your lawn, trim your trees, rake your leaves, clean your house.

Did you go into this movie with any kind of question you wanted to answer? Yes. I mean, number one, I wanted people to laugh really, really hard. And I wanted to also just examine this idea of conspiracies and lies. Whether we, in a matter of hours, could turn intelligent people who believed in, the theory of race replacement into murderers. Doesn't sound that funny. There's loads of laughs in the movie as well. Pick up myself.

Sorry. You know, back in the day, when I did the allergy show, you know, we had a song called Throw the Jew down the well, and I had to do it twice to get an audience to sing along. And at that point, it was a great revelation, and people were shocked, and isn't this outrageous, that these people were indifferent to anti-send.

And you're saying you had to do it twice because the first group you do in front of wasn't in different. No, they weren't. They chased me down. It was in Nashville, Tennessee, and they chased me down the street. And just for anyone who hasn't seen it, for like the two people who haven't seen it, describe what happens the second time. The second time I sing, you know, throw the Jew down the well. I'm for this country in Western Star from Kazakhstan. And people are singing, throw the Jew down the well. I got, so my country can be free. So my country can be free. You must grab him by his horns. You must grab him by his horns. Then we have a big. party and is that kind of thing so it was seen as shocking at the time the head of the adal came out against me as inciting anti-semitism i felt it was revealing a kind of underbelly of acceptance

of antisemitism rather than people being anti-semitic or indifference yeah so i quoted this historian of the holocaust called kershaw who said that the path to auschwitz was paved with indifference then a couple of years later well then many years later I'm doing this character, Dr. Nairo Kane and Degucelo. I'm in Kingman, Arizona, and I pitched this idea of a mega mosque. The idea was to show latent Islamophobia. And I say at one point, I go, you know, you're coming up as a little bit racist. And a guy in the audience says, I am racist.

I am racist against Muslims. And it was shocking. We put it out. But at that point, to have somebody on camera admit that they were racist, was shocking. Now it's commonplace and these horrible beliefs are out in the open, they're on social media, people are saying them out loud and proudly. Yeah. And so what's the effect of that? What's the effect of this society where political violence is seen as legitimate by the hard right and by the hard left as well, which is a new thing?

And my thing is saying, are we heading somewhere where intelligent people who are fed conspiracy theories could carry out heinous acts? Do you feel like you're holding up a mirror to society plain and simple, or is it like a weird, warped, funhouse mirror that gives us a distorted perspective of how scary things actually are? Again, the primary objective of all of this is to get people to laugh really hard. And smuggled in there is a bit of satire. It's a bit of hopefully people come out of the movie theater and think. Last year, me Julie, went to Lithuania.

It's an incredibly unique career you have. Not only that you've invented a genre and that you keep doing it, but that you're also able to do serious roles. And you have a sideline as a screenwriter. I can't think of another person who has a career. like that. I go back and it's interesting. I'm this kid who probably should have been a fairly successful, you know, lawyer.

And it's just a bizarre journey that I ended up doing this. You know, my dream was, could I make one classic comedy? And I felt like with Borac. I was like, I did it. You know, so anything else is really gravy and, you know, and yeah, I feel very, very lucky. Well, king in the castle, king in the castle. Paramount Plus is your streaming home for the NFL on CBS every Sunday.

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