WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 683 - Sacha Baron Cohen

Episode Date: February 22, 2016

You know Borat. You know Bruno. You know Ali G. But you probably don’t know much about Sacha Baron Cohen. The man himself sits down with Marc in the garage to talk about what goes into bringing such rich comedic characters to life, why he was drawn to comedy in the first place, and what’s next, with his new movie The Brothers Grimsby on the horizon. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated

category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton.

The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears welcome to the show i am mark maron this is wtf my podcast thank you for joining i appreciate it i am uh excited about today's show as you should be as well it's a uh pretty special show my friends a pretty special show because you will listen to a conversation i had with sasha baron cohen who does not do many public conversations, not out of character, and usually those are short, but we talked for a long time. Seemed like he was ready to talk about some stuff. And it was pretty fascinating, man. It was pretty fascinating. I really didn't know

what was going to happen. I'm glad I had the opportunity to do it apparently he um he was sort of uh defied or requested to uh to do it uh by a friend of his in england because i you know he goes out and when he has a movie coming out which he does he goes out and does uh he does some stuff but he usually does it um does it as uh does it as you know in character of some sort or he's got a shtick? And not this time, people. That's I guess I guess that's what I'm trying to tell you. Not this time. The comedian and writer Peter Bainham, a British fellow who's a friend of Sasha's, told him that he had to do the show. And he came over a couple of weeks ago and we sat in here and I gave him some coffee and he got lit and we went at it.

It was really great. real cultural masterpieces and real comedy masterpieces with uh with borat and bruno and um and the ali g stuff and uh and he he has done stuff that has such a punch to it and is so visceral and so immediate uh also character driven but but revealing a lot satirically about uh the world and people and our culture. And he just, those are amazing contributions to the world of comedy and to satire. He's got a new movie coming out. It comes out March 11th called The Brothers Grimsby, which is a narrative film. A pretty exciting and goofy hybrid of kind of an action movie and a doofus movie with some of the most crass filmic joke experiences that I think you'll ever see.

That's where he's pushing the buttons in this one. But the bottom line is, I didn't know what to expect. And we had a very full ranging conversation about comedy, about art, about education, about, you know, a little bit about religion,

about the power of comedy and why we do it. And I don't know, man, it was, it was exciting for me. Cause I don't, I don't know about you all. I've always wanted to know what was inside that guy and what drove him. And I got as close as you're going to get to getting some answers. So that's coming up in a few minutes. astounding and you know as i talked to him about uh you know how he puts those characters together why he puts those characters together i mean what i found out about him and you'll find out too as

you listen to it is that he loves the rush he's a real comic you know he you know he he didn't uh he's a natural but you'll be surprised to listen to how he trained and what he really wanted to do and what uh you know what is the real intent of of his movies and his characters and and it's not unlike uh a comedian or somebody who does things that are provocative somebody who takes the risk of of putting themselves out there in front of other people and or in situations for that for that that juice. Yeah, man. I mean, I think about that a lot. I've been thinking about that a lot lately in relation to my life

and how long do we have to live and what's really happening and what choices am I making? What do I need to do? What do I don't need to do at this point, at this juncture in the history of me? Who am I? It's weird, man, because I come full circle a lot of times. I'll go years where I feel like I've made strides and I have in some areas, but the same shit in my head. You hit these cycles. You have these moments where you're realizing, holy fuck, am I just a collection of ticks and

habits or a repetition of behaviors and actions that circle back around. It's amazing the limitations that you find in yourself. And then when you talk to somebody like Sasha, who has this freedom of talent to immerse himself in characters on purpose, it seems very liberating to me. Because a lot of times we just become the characters we are as a reaction to the situation we're in. characters we are in as a reaction to the situation we're in i guess my point is is that for fuck's sake don't be too hard on yourself if you're a freak inside and you just say like all right you know maybe maybe some of that'll come out in a healthy way and maybe some of that shit i'm just gonna have to live with and die with there's no wide open man there is you know but it's a pretty fragile place and it's a pretty fucking rough world i do think i i did get certainly more than i expected and had a great

conversation with a guy that has been you know privately hiding behind characters for a very long time so enjoy my talk now with Sasha Baron. You can get anything you need with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats, but meatballs and mozzarella balls. Yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats, get almost, almost anything.

Order now. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead

courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. Owen. I'm very happy you're here. You seem like an elusive character. Yeah, what? Today I do?

No, in general. You're like a rare... I've just started. That's it. We're on. A rare animal of some sort. It's like, where is that guy? Like the Yeti.

Exactly. Who is that guy? Does he do anything outside of the thing? Not really. Louis C.K., who I heard your interview podcast, what term would you use? Yeah, my conversation with Louis. Your conversation. What term would you use?

Yeah, my conversation with Louie. Your conversation. He actually, he once came and we employed him for two days to work on Bruno, a movie I did called Bruno. Oh, did you really? Yeah. What did he do? Well, a lot of it was, I don't know if you've seen the film. It's a gay Austrian character. I know the character.

And in it, he has a transformation. Yeah. He goes into self-hatred and he becomes an ultimate homophobe. And so Louis came in just for that kind of transition bit. And he was saying, there's a lot of advice on how I could build up muscle. So he basically came like, wait, this brilliant comedian. A lot of it was like, if you just, you know, when you're talking to people, just bend. Just, you know, lift, do the just you know when you're talking to people just bent just you know lift do the curls continually while you're talking yeah and actually he came up he

said you should do something in the ultimate fighting arena uh-huh oh that's he came up with that well he said do something in there i don't think quite had what we're actually going to do that but that was he had the kind of brain wave off that is something that would be great to stick a gay man in and and that was that was sort of a hairy scene right i mean that almost caused trouble didn't it yes so um that was a tricky scene actually it was tricky because so we wrote the so louis came in he had that idea of the ultimate fighting yeah and then i'm with my friend ant heinz he's this um great bold writer that i've been working with for about 18 years. From Britain?

Yeah. And we were thinking, you know, we want to finish the movie in this arena. Like a normal romantic comedy has the guy propose to the girl in a stadium full of sports fans. And they kiss and they run. On the video thing. Yeah, it's on the video. And we thought, all right, let's do that. Let's have all the sports fans.

Yeah. But let's do it in an ultimate fighting arena and let me make out with a guy yeah so so we wrote in the script all right we're going to do this and it's going to turn into a riot and we knew it'd be a security issue yeah you know like how do you so you you know i don't know if you ever been to see an ultimate fighting? No, it's not. It doesn't go well with comedy. Generally, comedians don't really. Well, I mean, well, I mean, Rogan's like an actual announcer.

Seth Rogen. Joe, Joe Rogan. He's a comedian. He's actually an announcer for me. It's just not my thing. I can't even deal with it. Ironically, I just being around, you know, that much alpha male insanity just kind of creeps me out a little bit so they don't know they they don't know your character no no no so basically

i thought how do i get out of there we're gonna have 2000 rednecks we want to have a riot but how do we get out of there and then are they even rednecks they're more bros they're more sort of muscle bros right well we did it the first one we did was in texarkana okay which i've been to once before texarkana is only famous for one thing. They pulled an African-American man, well, one person pulled an African-American man behind a pickup truck until he died. So that's the town.

So they're almost like wrestling fans. They're wrestling fans. It's an extreme place. Basically, we're there on the day, and the question is, we were 200 people short we couldn't didn't have the 2000 and one of the judges was a worked at a prison yeah at jail yeah and he said all right i can get 200 guys and suddenly 200 guys come out there on parole and these guys had swastikas on their heads really yeah yeah oh yeah so it's pretty good crazy so basically i do the

i'm told by my lawyer beforehand because what to make a will well well well firstly firstly the studio we did it through this company called mrc and they go again we just want you to sign this document i go what's this document and it's basically an insurance policy that if i get killed during filming yeah that they get all their money reimbursed so i'm like why i've never i go i don't have i've never had to sign this but why don't they go just sign it please otherwise we won't make the movie so um anyway get to the thing and i have this the night before i'm on the phone with my lawyer i've got this great lawyer who basically is this gay southern man he's a genius in the first amendment

he lives in India and he how does that happen? I don't know he kind of moved to an ashram he's like a dude and he's got 15 lawyers

working for him and whenever we're in trouble we call up and they're like okay in the case of Smith versus the state of arkansas it's very clear that the indemnity so we call them up and it's really good for us because we can call them up late at night and they're experts so he has 15 guys you know one guy is

just arkansas texas just all constitutional lawyers all constitutional first amendment law and so they go it goes all right there's like 12 things you need to know. None of these laws can you break. You know, and the big one was, he said, whatever you do, you know, don't incite a riot. Right. Because that's a federal offense. You know, if you are crossing a state line to incite a riot, then that's punishable, you know, by a minimum, I think, three years. And it's a federal offense.

So that's what the Chicago 7 were up for, actually. Right, but you would not... It's sort of a gray area. I mean, it's not what you wanted to do. Yeah, the problem was it was what I wanted to do. So I said, there's a problem, because I am crossing a state line in order to incite a riot at the end. Because I thought it would be a great thing for the movement.

Insanity. Yeah. And so there were about 15 things. He whatever you do you know so we went through all the nudity laws and the decency laws vicinity yeah so we had to like let people know that there would be nudity so as a result i had this poster printed which had like you know girls in bikinis really hot girls in bikinis going there will be nudity ultimate fighting obviously when they got there there was male nudity and then there were about 15 stipulations of like you know i can kiss him on the mouth i can kiss him on the nipple i can't put a finger in his rectum right he can place a

open that palm on my you know cheek but not the moment it gets within two centimeters of the rectum you're done so basically arkansas ended up being one of the only places in america we could get away with it because there was some uh the indecency laws were kind of framed wrongly they put the punctuation in the wrong place really and so essentially we thought we could win in a in a court case if you what if you put a finger in the rectum well no even those would still be illegal but the idea of kind of you know making out making out with the guy yeah being almost naked was okay and but so what ended up happening and how the hell did you get out of there because it was it was bad right yes it's pretty bad so i interviewed a bunch of security guys before and i go all right

here's your setup i'm in an ultimate fighting cage 2 000 guys they get angry i'm gonna make out with a guy how do you get me out and the seven guys all failed and then one guy came so you had to tell them the joke i mean yeah yeah i told yeah i told my security guy that we were hiring and then a guy came back he'd just been in afghanistan looking after car's eye and he said all right sir you know trapdoor yeah and he said that's the only way to get out which is a trapdoor so we built a trapdoor in the cage and then this guy when he shouted go go go the rule was i had to go right so um also for the night he like you know they hired like eight security guys to be around the cage they're like there's no way anyone is getting in that cage and i go right great so we did it was

interesting actually because we're doing the scene right you know but it's in a real environment right and it's the end of the movie so it has to work and it's so our aim is i've got to make it my boyfriend's going to come into the arena, into the ring. I haven't seen him for six months. I become this homophobe, disgusting guy called Straight Dave. Yeah. And he's going to see me. I'm going to fight him, beat the shit out of him.

And then when I'm going to give him the final death blow, I'm going to kiss him instead because i might he breaks my heart right right and we're going to make love yeah and there's going to be a riot so that's the aim and that's the end of the movie and that's what we have to do we got one opportunity to do it and i said listen just in case it doesn't work let's book another place in arkansas the night after so anyway it's like buster keaton with the general on the train like you only got that one shot when the train blows and if you didn't get it's over so i get there and i made a mistake i made a mistake which was in the writing this shows you when a scene is wrong

and a scene is right the audience know it so we're there and i'm straight there come on you fuckers everyone you know and i get everyone drunk and they love me and my i go okay who wants to fight me and my boyfriend comes into the room i haven't seen him and the first thing i do is i attack him and i beat him up and he's got fake blood in there and he's like a weak looking guy. Yeah. And he's bleeding at the end. And the crowd stopped booing me. Because you're beating him up.

Yeah, because I'm beating him up. And he's bleeding and he looks weak. And so I did the one thing that the lawyer told me not to do, which was I challenged the audience to fight me. I said, all right, because I've been told by the bodyguards, there's no way anyone's getting in. So, okay, come on, any of you fuckers

want to have some shit kicked out of you? I'll rip you apart! And I knew no one could get in the cage. And then at that point, I see like some kind of six foot ten giant,

you know, 250 pound, huge, muscly, Neanderthal man run, stop running towards the cage. I go, there's no way this guy's getting over. I've got security around it. I look down.

The security are gone. They're looking off. There's a big fight that's broken out with all the prison. Get the guys from the jail. And there's no one there. I go, all right, he's not getting over this cage. One hand, two hand. And he does a flip and lands, does this somersault, lands.

And he's huge. This guy's ripped. He's an ultimate fighter. Right, right. And he puts his arms in the air and the crowd roar. And basically at that point I hear, go, go, go. I jump out the trap door. Anyway, my friend Ant, who's the writer with me, co-writer, we're in this tunnel.

So we have a trap door the trap door leads to a tunnel the tunnel goes straight to a car that's got its door open with the engine running because we know if we've got to go everyone's going to run after yeah so anyway ant comes into this tunnel and he says all right get back in there come on sash get in there go back to the ring yeah go back in the ring okay there's a back in there. Come on, Sash, get in there. Go back to the ring. Yeah, go back in the ring. I go, there's a guy in there. He's going to kill me. And not only that,

they start throwing metal chairs into the ring. The guys, you know, the inmates in the crowd. He goes, get in there. Finish the movie. Come on, we've been working on this movie for two years. Finish the movie. Go in, kiss your boyfriend, finish the movie. We go home.

I go, but they're going to kill me. So I said to the bodyguard, I goguard i go i go all right pop your head in and if i can get in without going to hospital oh or going to hospital for a long time then i'll do it and he goes all right i go hey you agree yeah yeah so the bodyguard puts his head in and he goes get out of here we run we jump into the car then so we drive a we're in texarkana and word has obviously got out that i'm in town they know it's you now yeah they know it's me there's 2 000 people there who are looking for me we get straight in the cars and we drive through arkansas to the next. The police find out about it. I can't remember which town we went to. So how did you get that last shot? So I set up the same ring the next night.

We had 2,000 people the next night. And what we did was we couldn't put barbed wire on the top because I had to have some way of stopping people jumping in. Yeah. So I put fake barbed wire on the top of the ring so that people psychologically wouldn't want to jump into the ring yeah and um we had all the chairs kind of you know stuck down with metal basically metal chains prevent them going and uh yeah we did it the next night to an unsuspecting unsuspecting audience we had thepecting audience. We had the police there. There were about 15 cops there.

And you had the trap door and everything. Yeah, we had the trap door. And basically the cops said, listen, we know, we heard about Texarkana. Word is out. Yeah, if you break any of these laws, we're arresting you. So it's a bit like the end of the Blues Brothers.

I had the cops there. They were going to get me if I broke the law. It's like a Doors concert. They're just waiting for you to show your dick exactly and then you know the guy and then i sort of just want to make sure that nobody got in and in the end it kind of really worked we changed the scene a tiny bit so i realized that there was a problem with the scene because i attacked him the crowd booed me this time i said you know i going to turn my back to the crowd

and you're going to go and punch me in the head. And he did it and it was great because he was playing unfairly. The crowd were on my side. I then hit him. He hit me. He was tougher. I had some blood. And then the crowd were on my side.

And they were fully behind me. They were ready for me to really hurt him. And that's when i kissed him yeah and that's when they freaked out but they couldn't jump over and then somehow so i'm kissing and making out and all the time i'm thinking of all the legal laws you know i can stroke his ass that he goes to put a finger in my ass i'm like pull it away and kissing him that and then at one point, I see another chair flying in. It's a metal chair flying in. And I'm thinking, what the fuck? How did this happen?

What happened was somebody had got a knife in and was soaring through the chair. Commitment. So committed to hurting me. And then eventually, so I'm lying on my back and I'm thinking, if I hold my co-star tightly, I can move from left to right and dodge the chairs yeah but eventually after two chairs the i hear go go go and the rule was once you

go go go you have to go go into the yeah yeah so go into the tunnel into the waiting car drive off what we didn't think about though was that we had left the crew there with 20 ultimate fighters who didn't know what was going on and were really pissed at the crew. Yeah. And these 2,000 guys. So there was, it turned into this riot.

And in the end, I think it took about 40 cops to march into there to rescue the crew. Did they get hurt? Anybody? No, I mean, we had like,

Larry Charles was the director. He picked up the monitor. You know, the monitors were really heavy. He was like threatening to smash people in the face of the monitor and they managed to get out all right yeah but like when you're working with larry and you guys know what this is going to happen you know this shit is going to happen i mean i can see when you're talking about it that there's

it's the excitement of a guy who jumped off a mountain and lived you know like the thrill of it all i mean you're entering this situation knowing full well that this shit you know like the thrill of it all i mean you're entering this situation knowing full well that this shit you know is going to be on some level life or death right like you know larry knows that you know that yeah so so like it was worth the risk to you obviously but how much of that was really the reason you did it and how much of it was you know to to sort of make this provocative piece of film i mean it almost seems like extreme sports in itself so is the question whether we did it for the film or just the buzz of it yeah okay well that's a really interesting question okay i think you get to the heart of actually which is so when we're making the film we're like 10 guys on the road yeah this is for

all of them for for br and Borat, anyway. Yeah, so the Ali G show. And you get addicted to the adrenaline once you beat the cops once. Yeah. You go, all right, you know, great, let's do the next one. Yeah, what can we do now?

Then you beat the FBI, and then, you know, you start winning. You beat the FBI with the Ali G show in terms of getting access. Yeah, getting access to the FBI. Well, on Bullrat, the FBI started following us. They got so many complaints that there was a terrorist traveling in an ice cream van. Really?

It was, you know, we shot it 10 years ago. So it was a couple of years after 9-11 when we actually shot it. So that's interesting because that's like weird backstory that really adds to the message of the movie that they were that paranoid that they of course the terrorist would be a little fat guy and this guy in an ice cream truck yes exactly we're the classic so the fbi got so many complaints that they started you know compiling a little file on us and eventually they came to visit us at the hotel and we you know i obviously went missing you know when i heard because they're like fbi's downstairs sasha disappear oh really yeah because you don't want me to be apprehended i mean we had one time in new york when we're

would you have stayed in character well the first time i used to stay in character with the police yeah the first time i think was in sedona in arizona right and we didn't really have our shit together and we didn't know the law well enough and so i thought this was with borat yeah with but we are doing the ali g show and there was some kind of psychic masseuse who he was trying to get me to relax. I was being very tense. He goes, listen, I'm going to go out the room. Pardon my terrible American accent. When I come back in, I want you to be relaxed.

He comes back in and I'm masturbating. Well, I'm masturbating under the cloth. Right. So I thought, what's the big deal? He calls the police. So the police turn up. I'm at the next place and I'm alone. Yeah.

And the police sort of surround. I thought i thought okay i'll pretend to be asleep the police pull me out of this car and they start questioning me and i'm gonna know what the problem is uh and they go what what exactly did you do i go i was touching my crumb and making a swift movement and they they go, sir, what is a khram? A khram, a khram. And, you know, I go to... You have a made-up word? Yeah, exactly. And then, so I stayed in character. The crew wasn't around.

No one was around, you know. Yeah. And I remember I went to blow my nose, put my hand in my pocket, and the guy pulled his gun. Which you realize, by the way, when you hear about all these kind of African-American kids getting shot,

you've got to be so well-trained to not get shot if you're in that part. It's so easy. You know, I was going to blow my nose and the guy was going to shoot me. Well, it's sort of like you sort of deal with that in the new movie when you finally get the gun. Yes, yeah.

There's that moment. Oh, my God. Yeah, when you've got a gun, you want to shoot. You know, a cop's got a gun. He's going to use it. Right. So we handed over the tape, actually, because we didn't realize this problem they wanted the tape they said stay here you're going to have to we're going to have to come back and arrest you

and what we didn't realize was we called up the lawyer our lawyer in india and he said simulating masturbation in Arizona is a crime, and it's two years imprisonment. And actually, I think R. Kelly went to jail for that, one of the things he went to jail for. So we said to the lawyer, okay, what do we do? He said, get on a plane right now. Get out of Arizona.

Run. Because they've got the evidence. You gave over the tape, which is the worst thing you could ever do. Right. So again, getting back to it, so there was some part of you you know even though you had the conceit and the structure of of what this character was capable of and provoking a social message or a satirical message but but there was some other part of you that was like how how far can we push the law yes and that became very exciting well everything i've ever done lawyers have immediately said,

their knee-jerk reaction has been, it's illegal. We can't do that. Impossible. Oh, yeah, they do that with everything. Why not just err on the side of, like, don't do that? Yeah, exactly. I mean, lawyer, their aim, and I have to always explain it to the heads of the channels or studios,

is the aim of your lawyers is not to tell you what's legal. It's to prevent your company from getting sued right and it was in borat we ended up getting sued i think you know 150 times but it ended up being very beneficial for fox uh-huh um because you knew you were okay yeah we were all right we knew we were on the right side of the law but they still got to pump some money into you know making that clear now the lawyers still have to go like, no, and that costs $1,000 a second. Yes, exactly. So you get insurance for the kind of lawsuits.

So in the script writing stage of the movie, it's all about what will make the greatest movie and what will make the best film. But yes, there is that problem and obviously you know criminals must have the same thing as well which is once the adrenaline kicks in you get addicted to the adrenaline yeah and that's when you start making silly mistakes and the crew would say come on let's just do this and do that yeah you know and that's when actually people can start getting hurt or arrested isn't interesting because that momentum like especially borat because that's sort of a masterpiece and you know and and you know and

it's it's considered that and it deserves it and it did show a lot of uh us more about our country and it also was hilarious and whatever but the idea that you know that if if people aren't inherently prejudiced they are inherently you know um complacent that they you know out of politeness they'll go ahead and sing you know throw the jew down the wall that they were there even in that mood even in that moment like you didn't get the feeling like what what that's a room full of anti-semites yeah it's actually a room full of fucking hicks that are sort of like well this guy's indulge this guy you know but on the other side of that the the the flip side that is dangerous is what you're talking about which is where you get a group of people that get so adrenalized by the possibility of starting shit that shit happens.

Yeah. There's a few interesting issues you brought up there because you're right. Throw the Jew down the well. What does it really show? Does it? And I suppose for people listening out there who haven't seen it i google throw the jew down the wall you're right it's much i don't need to explain it okay yeah so what does it show does it show that the people in that bar are anti-semitic no not really they probably don't hate jews they probably well here's the moment as a jew here's

what i felt was that you know at first they're, who the fuck is this guy? And then next they realized you're not a threat. He's sort of a clown. So, you know, the song's stupid. He's stupid. Let's, okay, let's indulge the foreigner. He seems to be trying to speak our language. But once they all started singing, I had this feeling that, you know,

when you started talking about Jews and money and, you know, taken by the horns, that there is part of their you know limited uh intellectual narrative that involves jews you know running the government so yes of course that is in place and i think i think you're right i think it's you know what does it show is there any satire in it i think it shows not necessarily that they're anti-semitic but i think the dangerous thing is people who are indifferent about evil people you know right so essentially somebody comes up and says has an incredibly racist song against african-americans that's vicious and about them being you know the worst stereotypes of african

americans for a crowd to just come and sing along and go yeah with the black you know whatever the lyrics would be is almost more dangerous i mean i at university i studied um uh nazi germany as amongst specializing 20th century history yeah and uh there was the main historian at the time was this guy called Ian Kershaw. He was the main historian of sort of that period. And his thing, he had this sentence, which was the path to Auschwitz was paved with indifference. Right. Which I thought that was, it's a great comment. It's not that people actively hate black people. It's not that people actively hate gypsies or actively hate Jews.

It's that they're ready to let it happen. Well, this is one of these things, like as an American Jew, you know, you're sort of brought up with this, you know, Holocaust awareness that is sort of plowed into you. And even when I was a kid, you know, I'm 52, you know, they'd show us the movies at Hebrew school. And you really can't wrap your brain around that experience. I mean, it's not that I, you know, that I'm indifferent,

but it's like, how do I really understand that that really happened and that's possible that it's happening and then there's like outside of the the sort of indifference there's the good german thing that you know the people that go along with whatever authority is in place and i think also like what you see in in the in the borat movie is that is that as long as it's not us yeah fuck it yeah do you know what i mean maybe they are a problem i don't know yeah but you went to where'd you go to college i went uh i went in england i went um to cambridge so that's a good school yeah i mean it's good i went there mainly because of the cambridge footlights that so monty python came out of the cambridge footlights so that was i wanted

to do comedy. Which is what, the sort of like non-theater, theater group? Yeah, it's like the comedy group. Okay. And ironically, so I went there, you know, I went there to get into this group. It's a bit like the Lampoon, and I was never allowed in. Really?

Yeah. So that was, you know, I got there the first week, great, do the audition, and couldn't get in. And as a result of that, I ended up doing straight acting. A rumor went around the university that I was this brilliant actor, even though I'd never done any acting before. I got given this lead in a Chekhov play. Yeah. And the rehearsal started happening. And the director said, wait a minute, you can't act.

And so he said I'm going to sack you from the get rid of you. You can't act. And the rest of the cast, they really liked me and they were like, you sack him, we all go. And so I ended up actually doing this Chekhov play and ended up doing kind of straight roles.

How did you do with it? It ended up being fine. In the end I did a kind of sort of funny version of the Chekhov. It was a Chekhov comedy. But you're always compelled towards comedy. Yeah. So wait, so where'd this start? Where'd you grow up then? What part?

So I grew up in Northwest London. And what's that like? It's a kind of pretty Jewish neighborhood. Yeah. Sort of middle class. Yeah. And your dad did what? Accountant.

Oh, yeah? Yeah. And what'd your mom do? She was like a keep fit teacher keep fit yeah keep it what do you like exercise she taught classes yeah talk classes in the living room oh really in the living room like a few ladies yeah some jewish ladies through the movements yeah exactly you had a pretty big living room or was a very small class it was a small class she'd make a living at it necessarily but she had her heart was in the right place exactly and how many siblings you have i got two brothers oh yeah yeah and are they in show business well one is the composer for he's a composer he does all the movies that i do oh that's nice is he out

here is he he's in london but he was we grew up, he was a jazz musician growing up. Oh, yeah? And so the house was always full of music. And he'd take me. Older brother? Older brother. Yeah. Older brother.

And so from the age of kind of 12, he was taking me out. He used to do sort of late night jams. You know, that's the only place you could sort of practice your jazz. And he was trying to get into jazz college. So you'd have to go to these clubs. So I would go. Somehow my parents allowed me to go to these midnight jams yeah we'd get back at like four in the morning then i'd wake up for school at seven yeah but yeah so he ended up you know sort of versing that kind of music and then he

started producing a lot of kind of soul and early kind of r&b and that kind of stuff so we had a there was always a kind of you know a lot of the artists were round in the living room eating my mom's food and oh yeah so your parents were pretty progressive open creative people in a way at least at least uh indulged you guys yes they were happy for us to make some music and muck around be fun yeah to have that to be interested in something yeah well my dad loved comedy and my mom loves music. So what was your first exposure to comedy that made you sort of like have that moment where you're like, holy shit. I think I was eight years old.

Yeah. And Life of Brian came out in the cinemas. Oh, yeah. So it was an X in England. It's kind of their best movie. Yeah, it's incredible. And my brothers managed to sneak me into a cinema. An X, it was an X.

X, which is an 18, okay. So it got banned. Actually, Life of Brian got banned in a lot of England. Because of the religious implications. Yes, the religious stuff. And my brothers took me in. I think it was the first time I'd seen a fully naked woman. Yeah, yeah.

And is there a guy's cock in it? I feel like there is. In my memory, there's a guy's cock in it. think I feel like there is I don't know in my memory there's a guy's cock in it I think there is maybe I'd like to think so sure why not

well I mean let's blame that yeah so and that obviously I mean there's probably a lesson there which is don't show

eight year olds x-rated movies comedies with cock in it yeah exactly but I just remember laughing at it and I was obsessed by python after that yeah and now and so you like watched all the flying circus and watch your

other movies yeah and you know meaning of life and oh yeah yeah there was something about going into cinema and there being that outrageous laughter yeah i think maybe subconsciously i'm trying to achieve i don't know no no no i'm not very good at the self-analysis stuff are you not no the english people are not very good at that you americans are brilliant that you yeah it's a that is sort of true isn't it it's yeah but you you grew up with the sort of open-minded people who taught exercise classes i mean there is some self-awareness to there must have been a little of that i don't know i don't i don't think in england there's much self-awareness i think you know if people are what they describe as mentally ill here in england you just call them eccentric you know so everyone finds them like fun eccentric you kind of indulge them until

they're annoying and yeah you're like yeah exactly that's that guy yeah you know there'd be uh you know there'd be some guy flashing his privates on the in the nearby park that's just some eccentric guy you know so when did you first start performing comedy of any kind so i think i was about nine years old when i wrote my first sketch based on a python sketch kind of problem yeah i mean it's terrible but i was in this kind of jewish youth club and they would do kind of final performances and you know final parties and i would write a little sketch and i get sort of excited about it yeah and then um yeah i don't know you know i started doing a little routine with my brother on the circuit uh he was a musician on what circuit the jewish youth club

it's kind of the jewish old age old age home circuit how old were you then i was about uh 16 and we would dress as hasidic jews and sing like jewish songs yeah and one of the songs was this song called schwitzing yeah which was about how these hasidic jews get so hot yeah that they end up shaving their beards and taking their clothes off and actually converting to christianity at the end and it would go down terribly i mean these old age homes would hate it who was booking you i don't know but the people were like please take the money never come back here again what did you call yourselves the coen brothers what was it was it? I can't remember. The Schwitzing brothers. But eventually I got seen doing that and I got hired to,

by the Paramount Comedy Channel, to do Bruno, actually. To do like some kind of undercover stuff. Yeah, a version of Bruno. You come up with Bruno at that point. Well, I did this, I started doing this cable show when I was about 23

yeah and it had about 40 viewers but i was doing these characters yeah and one of the characters was this early form of ali g yeah um but ali g like this is what's interesting also interesting about the the brothers grimsby is that these characters, you know, that guy, what's his name? Yeah, Nobby. Nobby is a very specific British type. Yeah. You know, what you are lampooning is very specific British type, as was Ali G. And both of them are, you know, we can get it enough. You know, we know what the American version is.

But, you know, Ali G, I still don't know exactly what his background would be or who that guy, you know, what was his life like yes well it was intentionally ambiguous so Ali G the idea was you know how could I go into a room with a very intelligent person somebody who was an expert usually a member of the upper class and ask the most idiotic questions possible and not get thrown out the movie right so i decided that if he had this you know whiff off ethnicity about him and possibly even islam or pakistan or whatever that they their prejudice would lead them to assume that I could be incredibly badly educated. Their white guilt, they would indulge you because it would look sort of like,

look, I'm talking to one of them. Yes, exactly. And also their stereotype of the uneducated ethnic masses meant that they believed that somebody as idiotic as leg could exist when actually allergy couldn't exist there's nobody that if you were that valid somebody was that stupid they probably would die you know they would the one i owe to mourn they'd actually be dead right yeah the idea was he was ethnically ambiguous as a result of that when i within like a couple of weeks of you know putting him out on air every there are

a few ethnic communities that claimed me as their own so the greeks greek community said he's greek yeah pakistani community said he's pakistani and actually part of the black community said he's black yeah even though i wore no makeup and as you can see i'm pretty damn white yeah um and then um at some point it came out that i wasn't any of those and i was actually jewish and then at that point i was accused um a a black paper in england wrote an article saying is ali g racist which is a bizarre question because ali g is a fictional character so i don't know maybe he is racist we hadn't worked it out we hadn't right um but the i think they were asking the question of was the creative ali g racist and they asked a bunch of black comedians eight of them said no and two of them said one said i don't know and one of them said yeah he's a racist that led to

headlines in all the newspapers in england one comedian yeah yeah tabloid driven culture exactly all the tabloids wrote ali g is a racist and they didn't even know i think a lot of them didn't know my name and it became at that point i had this dilemma which was do i come out and say come on man i'm an anti-racist and you know racism and anti-racism is a issue that i feel strongly about yeah when i was you know my 20s i used to march against racists and fascists and neo-nazis and you know university you know my undergraduate thesis was all about racism so and uh how to combat that so so what were the questions you were asking yourself i mean like you know did you have to do some soul searching around how that character was being misunderstood or did

was there no i didn't have to do any soul searching my thing was i knew where i stood on race i knew that i was vehemently against any form of racism yeah and i wanted to shout out and you know say the press i'm not a racist and here's my evidence but i decided to do nothing we were making the allergy show at the time and me and the producer sat down we just said you know what let's just work engage don't engage yeah and for a week the press debated it as to whether it was a race and you're just watching them talk about this clown you invented yes and basically at the end of the week they concluded that it's not racist at all and some of the kind of greatest intellectuals in england

came out and said you know he's not a racist but by the end of the week by doing nothing i become from this niche comedian i became a household name um because of that because i said nothing because of the public argument about whether or not the character was racist or whether that it represented racism yes but like didn't leg have some uh caribbean affect a bit yes yeah he was he was a he wanted to be black yeah he wanted to say he spoke in jamaican patois yeah and the idea was he was this probably middle, and it was ambiguous, you know, sort of lower middle class guy. Yeah. From some kind of ethnic background.

It was unclear and irrelevant, actually, who was unhappy with how mundane his own ethnic life was and actually wanted to adopt this exciting foreign uh african-american gangster culture right so you know it's a complete that was what i think what blew everyone's mind here was like this is a completely unique and ambiguous ethnic character yeah that the fact that it didn't land on on the radar in any sort of set way made it even more interesting and more empathetic in a way. And I had some kind of affinity with Alishia. I mean, my first way I made money from the age of sort of 11 to 14 was as a sort of break dancer,

a breaker on the, you know, I used to go out on the streets, had one friend and, you know, we used to go and make some. You can do it? You put the cardboard down? We just put the cardboard down we just put the car we had a linoleum oh you did so you were guys were pros you had linoleum you had a floor yeah

we were terrible but oh you were no we were so young that we made some money people were like look at them trying yeah exactly and they gave us you know we'd make 15 pounds but if you're 11 years old you made 15 quid that was a lot. So there was part of me that identified as this kind of nebbishy kid who saw this rising movement of hip-hop. I mean, prior to that, it was kind of electro across the pond. I was like, oh, my God, that seems amazing. Yeah. And we fully embraced it.

We got into the graffiti and the language. fully embraced it we got into the graffiti and the language and so allergy as a result you know that i had a lot of knowledge about early hip-hop and um i mean this is quite strange actually talking about this to an american audience but no it's great you know some geeky white kid this is this is the influence that the african-american community had in yeah the early 80s so now how like because even in this new movie, like, there was points in the new movie, like, I sat in the screening room at your editor's office last night. That's not a fun way to watch a movie.

You want to have 300 people around you. No, no, I, you know, but I'm glad I got to see that. It seemed to be the only way. But what's interesting, you know, in talking about Ali G and then talking about Borat or any of the stuff that's relatively, that's very provocative, you know provocative in that very Tay prank way. But the underlying story of this thing, after all is said and done, after really, I don't want to spoil anything, but you do have the biggest dick joke, I think, in recorded film history. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Did the Oscars have a category for that? Well, I think they'll make one. Yeah, exactly. They're under a lot of fire. Maybe you should just get involved with that. Yeah. The story is about a sort of,

it's in defense of the lower class at some level. Yes. You are fighting for the little guy. You know, I think class in England is still an issue. Yeah. So part of- We don't call it that here. There is no class here. I mean, that's- Well, there yeah so part we don't call it that here yeah there is no class i mean that's well there is but it's not we don't call it that we just call the people that are would be categorically lower class uh we you know we've convinced them that you know just keep

working yeah and you can be higher class and and then they'll they'll think according to that yeah i mean it's interesting here actually because the American dream the brilliant thing about it is that if you're lower class or working class or have you want to describe it you actually want to aspire to be what would be termed in England as upper class because that's the dream right so in England you don't really have that aspiration of escaping your class no you just you're it. Yeah, and there's a pride in being working class. Therefore, you have some people who are fake working class.

People who speak in a Cockney accent, even though they actually went to Eton or went to some real fancy school. Because they get more cred by being working class. But yeah, I mean, part of Ali G, if I think about it, was there was an attempt subtly to slightly undermine the establishment. The establishment at that point was partly upper class. And the idea was if I sit down with this incredibly powerful person and that person indulges me for an hour with the most idiotic questions, then maybe that person should not be given complete respect.

Right. For somebody to actually sit in a room for an hour and believe that guy existed means that maybe, you know, the populace shouldn't necessarily give that person complete authority. Right. You know, so it's a way of slightly pricking the authority no it seemed like that was the whole agenda of lag was to to show that this class difference was real and that there was no negotiating it yeah they're just going to condescend yeah and they're going to behave politely and they're going to hope you go away back to your little

neighborhood or whatever exactly right and they're going to feel good about themselves sure because they talk to you yeah i remember i did an interview here with james lipton from the actor studio and um he started telling me he was very excited to tell me that he'd had african-american men over to the house and you know told me off camera and you know right barbershop choirs yeah yeah you know it's like that that lenny br Bruce bit about how to entertain your black friends at parties. Yeah, exactly. But the irony was I was completely white. Yeah, yeah.

But he was trying to get down with Ali G. Sure. How much does your Jewishness or your faith inform your way of thinking? I mean, how Jewish were you brought up? I mean, you got a hell of a Jewish name. Yeah, Baron Cohen. Well, I don't think that much, really. I mean, how Jewish were you brought up? I mean, you got a hell of a Jewish name. Yeah, Baron Cohen. Well, I don't think that much, really. I mean...

But did you practice? Was there some education? Did you have relatives or grandparents that taught you what it meant to be the sort of premium put on education and progressiveness? I mean, was that part of your upbringing well that's an interesting that's an interesting um question because

the thesis that i did at university was all about jews in the black civil rights movement here and i call it the black civil rights room because that was the term they used at the time so in the 60s yeah and the question was you know why did jews get involved in the black civil rights movement more than any other ethnicity sometimes do you know they were represented probably 10 20 times more than they should have been proportionally and the question was was it because they were jews or was it for some other reason? And, you know, my research and my conclusion was basically Jews in America at the time were the most liberal ethnic group,

and they were probably the most activist group in any liberal political movement. Because of the roots in early socialism and getting out of the sweatshops and that first generation immigrants that they had united to integrate themselves into America. Yes. So, you know, you see,

you basically see that the same percentage of Jewish students who are involved, you know, in the black civil rights movement are then moving on straight from that into the anti-Vietnam war movement right so you know people like abby hoffman and you know people like that so and the interesting thing is those people who were jews didn't get involved as jews in the civil rights movement they got involved because they were liberals and they were like you know there's this racist stuff going on we want to fight it right but for the kind of rest of the jewish community they were like these jews are getting

involved and you know isn't this great we're helping black people and we are yes the ones who are middle-class jews that had no real political affiliation necessarily yeah out on long island we're like that's very nice that those kids are doing yeah but really the kids who were getting involved weren't getting involved as jews and and what i found out was that the african-americans thought that they were just white people they didn't see these people as jews right they were like all right a bunch of white guys are getting involved and we don't know what their ethnicity is yeah and so um the question is why people do stuff. Is it because of their racial or ethnic identity? Or is it something deeper? So I think, you know, I didn't get involved in comedy or any of this stuff because I'm a Jew.

I think there's probably some reason that Jews are over-involved in the, you know, comic community. I don't know. I mean, why are you involved? Do you think comic community i don't know i mean why are you involved do you think it's because you're jewish no but i i feel like there was part of my upbringing you know probably because i you know i lived here that most of the comics that when i was a kid uh you know outside of you know snl and stuff most of the stand-up comics that i gravitated towards were old jews like i liked a lot of the old Jewish guys. There was a cultural identification that I found compelling

in my grandparents' generation that there was a type, you know, the deli type or there was a neurotic type and that a lot of them seemed to have a quick timing, that it was all very specifically Jewish. And it helped me sort of identify. I think when I was younger, I did a Woody Allen play that don't drink the water. And I played Walter, I did a Woody Allen play, The Don't Drink the Water, and I played Walter.

And I played him like, what are you kidding me? And it was very easy for me to slip into that because it was, you know, I wanted it to be tangible to me. I wanted that to be part of my cultural heritage. And it just was by virtue of the fact that, you know, I grew up in it somewhat.

You know, I identify with it, but I don't know if that's why. There was a period where I separated myself from my Jewish identity. I refused to talk about being a Jew on stage because you wouldn't necessarily know I was a Jew immediately, and I got very annoyed with the stereotype of the Jew,

and I didn't want to fall into that. Now I'm a little less worried about it. Yeah, yeah. Like if I'm going to become an old Jew of some sort, I'll take it to fall into that. Now I'm a little less worried about it. Yeah. Yeah. Like if I'm going to become an old Jew of some sort, I'll take it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I know that your grandparents, part of your family is Israeli, right?

Yes. Yeah. My mother is actually, yeah. Like from Israel. Yes. Yeah. So you have that part. Yeah. Because that's a whole different thing than I imagine middle class British Judaism and

certainly from middle class American Judaism. judaism and certainly from you know middle class american judaism the israeli thing is like this whole other yeah yeah yeah it's it's totally the kind of opposite oh yeah yeah it's tough yeah right yeah so your mother was a tough israeli uh i don't know if she's tough she's uh you know she's a formidable hilarious woman yeah but did you did you do the pilgrimage? Do you go to Israel? Do you have relatives in Israel? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've got relatives in Israel. I mean, it's interesting because we grew up, that side of the family were not into humor. Yeah. And my dad, we'd go and visit her parents. And my dad would be making jokes at the time. And my late grandfather would get very angry and say, stop making these diaspora jokes.

Diaspora jokes. Yeah, he was a German. They were German. Oh, yeah. And very, very German. You know, they were extremely interculture, very precise. German Jews are a little heavy. Yeah, they're tough.

They're aristocratic. Well, my late grandmother grandmother who only died last year actually she was uh apparently she was the oldest uh keep fit teacher in the world so this keep fit is a tradition yeah exactly so i actually did a video online if you look up 99 year old keep fit teacher that was my late grandma who died last year and somebody once asked uh you know you know they took her to bruno yeah see the movie bruno which i don't know why the hell my cousins did that and she saw her and she said well i didn't like it and they go well what kind of humor do you like and she said ballet

and that really is the german jewish answer you know but uh yeah they they are not into humor and i think it's the the jews that were in england and america our way of coping with everything is making jokes but not only coping but integrating yeah i mean that you know i think that's a lot of what like you know what happened was that you know jews were not really welcome but eventually people realized like well you know they're pretty smart and you know they seem to have a handle on some shit. Yeah. So we're going to have to tolerate them somehow. So I think that, like, I didn't realize that in the 20s there was a bunch of Jewish boxers.

Yes. Like in that, you know, any way that they could integrate, you know, so, you know, they could either pass or at least have a community within what America was at that time, they would do it. Yeah. And entertainment seemed to be like, it was very insulated and then it sort of branched at least have a community within what america was at that time they would do it yeah and and entertainment seemed to be like it was very insulated and then it sort of branched out and everybody thought that you was funny yeah so you never really moved here i mean you here to la i mean you you sort of mostly live in london so we're here i mean we're here we're here probably

half the year yeah and then the way it works is we're off filming somewhere for three months a year and then three months a year we're in London. Did you ever end up studying acting or any part of performance? Yeah, I did. When I was in university, I came up with this character called Solly. He was an idiot. He was like my first kind of real character yeah and I came up with it one night and I had my roommate came back I

go I want to play this tape and he started really laughing hard and a friend of mine in the sort of acting group in university said he'd just gone to this to this clown course run by this guy called philip goliere he's famous right and he's like the clown teacher in the world people people sort of travel from around the world to see him he was uh part of this school called uh lecoq uh-huh yeah exactly that's where the word comes from and so i decided all right let me try and find out whether this idiotic character i was doing is actually a clown character i want to kind of learn about it and so i ended up i left university and studied with this guy for how long over about six months really yeah and was it amazing

oh incredible this is this guy is the legendary guru for any person who wants to be a professional idiot around the world. So he teaches pure clown and he teaches this other style of comedy called bouffant or buffoon. Yeah. Have you heard of that? Yeah. It's a really interesting, it's this medieval style of kind of satire. So like your sidekick in in borat is sort of buffoon yeah yeah yeah and his theory because i went to my clown teacher afterwards

you know philip goliath said yeah i'm doing clown he goes no you're a buffoon i go really i'm buffoon and he goes so those that style was so there was this kind of, in the, you know, I think sort of 11th to 15th century. Yeah. You'd have a bunch of outcasts from society who would, you know, gays, heretic priests, Jews, people with deformities would be told to live outside of villages. Yeah. You know, in their, you know know sort of in the forests or you know in little get ostracized because they're deformed or or stupid or yeah or freaks of some nature then once a year they were let back into the villages or towns and they would be allowed to

put on bouffant plays and um so you'd have like some guy who was, you know, three and a half foot tall. Yeah. Would pretend to be the king of France and do a bouffant play. I'm the king of France. And the idea, the aim of the bouffant was that the king of France would watch the bouffant play. Yeah. And go, that's not me. That's not me.

That's not me. That guy is tiny. He's three foot tall. And, you know, the three foot tall guy go, what are you talking about? I am the king. I am the king. Don't tell me I'm not the king. I am the king.

And the king would go, it's me. It's me. I'm not the king. I'm the king. And eventually the king would have a heart attack and die. And then the Bufon would go, that's one for me. And so it's a really nasty form of satire. It's really kind of horror.

It's the kind of humor of the dispossessed and i ended up using the technique a little bit in the publicity campaign for borat when it came to i ended up hosting the mtv awards in europe as borat and there was one little sketch i did where the president of kazakhstan comes onto the stage and to show my respect i got down on my knees and i kissed his crotch um anyway the government of kazakhstan then complained to mtv and they complained to the british government and uh there was kind of they complained to fox as well you could say you're making this movie and at that point, okay, there's an opportunity. You know, they wrote this letter going, how can this man be a real Kazakhstan?

His mustache was too big in Kazakhstan. Our mustaches are smaller. They did that? Yeah. So they kind of wrote this letter to the British. Did you work for you? Yeah, exactly. So I realized, all right, okay, all right.

This reminds me actually of the kind of theory of Buffon. So when it came to the promotion of Borat, I heard that the president of Kazakhstan was coming to America. So I said, all right, I'm going to Washington. And the studio freaked out. They're like, you're not going to Washington. You're not making this movie political. I said, well, you know what?

I own the character. I'm going to Washington. So I went to washington and we found out i i decided i wanted to do a press conference outside the kazakhstan embassy claiming to be the representative of kazakhstan yeah and so obviously they found out we were coming so we did some recon and found out that we had like a 15 minute window when the president of Kazakhstan would be heading to the White House. So in that 15 minutes, we jumped there. We called to the press there. And I delivered this press conference.

Yeah. Saying, you know, I want to say on behalf of Kazakhstan that the Jew, Cohen, have made a mockery. He have said some terrible rumors about our country, like that we have democracy and we treat women respectfully. Of course, these are scurrilous lies. And then it's a result of that the governor of Kazakhstan did a publicity campaign. They hired a PR company. They said, all right, we're going to do a PR campaign to show that Kazakhstan is a great place. And they put about 30 million bucks into promoting the

real Kazakhstan however for the audience the audience were watching these tv ads and they thought I'd put the tv ads on right you know they were so ridiculous yeah come to Kazakhstan we have a fantastic potassium deposits you know they were so ridiculous and so they ended up really promoting the movie but it was was really using that fond theory. That's hilarious. And why did you pick Kazakhstan? I mean... There was nothing about Kazakhstan.

I mean, originally, Borat had a kind of different name and he was from a different country. He was from Moldova and then he went to Albania. And it kind of... His name and the country he came from changed according to whichever company I i was working for so what we've learned here you know it essentially is that despite whatever distance you may take from your creativity uh you know in in you know initially right which is sort of like i don't know

what's gonna is that you know both with ali g and with borat you you were very uh sort of decisive and intelligent about utilizing particular modes of satire to achieve these ends. Yes. Yes, to a degree. Yes, yes. So now, please tell me about the difference between clowning and bouffant.

So beautifully pronounced. Because it seems to me that this six months at the clown college, what's it, Le Coq? Yeah. Was really what opened you up creatively yeah yeah i loved it because people were coming from around the world and this guy philip goliath would sit there with a little drum yeah and if you weren't funny he'd hit the drum and you'd go off really yeah and was this only with physicality or could you talk or

how you could talk as well you could talk it was kind of talking clownity or could you talk? No, you could talk as well. You could talk. It was kind of talking clown. You wore a red nose. You did. You wore a red nose. And so somebody would start bursting into tears. They'd flown all the way from Australia. Yeah. They'd walk on stage.

And within three seconds, he hits the drum and they have to sit down. And he would let me go on stage sometimes for 15 minutes. And so the rest of the class started hating me. And me and this guy from Sweden would have this kind of double act where we never would do the exercises, we'd stay on, we wouldn't understand. If he hit the drum, he'd say, Get off! You get off the stage right now!

You're a bad student! Go and sit on the chair for the bad student! And, you know, know I just sort of stand no good student you know and we did this kind of carry I didn't know what was going on as this kind of surreal experience never really explained what was going on but over those six months I kind of found got confidence in doing this kind of style of comedy. So I suppose the difference is,

Bouffant is this nasty, knowing form of satire. The aim is to undermine the establishment. And Clown is a more simple and loving character. So the Clown is the simpleton who has the naivety of a child and is as stupid as a child it's the reason why if a three-year-old kid walks into a room everyone laughs yeah it's because the kid is saying really stupid things yeah but in a very nice sweet way and that really is what the clown is doing you know so the the rule with clown is if this character was one degree more stupid he'd probably be dead right because he wouldn't be able to survive right across the road or so ali g yeah yeah so ali g was that guy here but you know you you can sort of believe this

guy exists yeah well it seems to me that you've you've created hybrids of these two characters like you seem like borak could sort of go either way yeah exactly and i thought i knew what i was talking about and i went to the clown teacher he said no you got it completely wrong yeah it's interesting right and then and like bruno uh is is is also a hybrid but this guy in the grimsby movie is sort of almost straight clown yeah way yes yeah he's more of a simpleton now. I mean, I know I'm being narrow by using these titles or these labels, but I mean, coming from what you come from, and that's how you sort of learn how to learn your comedic craft along these lines, but are also somehow able to integrate a full, seemingly a full emotional and psychological life,

which would be the actor in you, into these clowns and bouffants. Yes. Interesting. So what, listen to me using the word interesting. It's horrendous. Well, you just used the word bouffants. Well, I'm excited about that. Exactly.

Now, I guess my question then is that, you know, after obviously you played out the ability to efficiently or at least stealthily prank because of your notoriety, and it feels like it's been a bit since you've done something like that with those three characters. Was there ever a thought of using prosthetics or continuing that tradition tradition or is that something you exhausted? You know, I miss it. I miss the adrenaline and I miss the, you know, those sketches were kind of pure comedy. You go out with a pure comic idea and you see, can I make it happen?

Yeah. But I think it will be impossible to really get away with those characters anymore. Right. Mind you, on Friday, i did a little piece i went out as myself as a kind of bbc reporter asking people what they thought of sasha baron cohen movies and they had no idea it was you well you know one in every sort of four didn't really know it was me right and you know some people got really riled up one person called me a cunt oh yeah yeah well i mean like as i talked to you and then the more i realized that

how much of of of the drive of these characters you know the prank characters was to to push the first amendment to to ride a line with that and and to push this idea because in the new movie the level of of of i i don't even like the word crass but you know extraordinarily graphic graphically executed filthy jokes yes that's my special yeah but it is it you love it yeah i don't know why i actually i blame python i blame python you do you bring life of Brian. I remember Meaning of Life. Oh, with the fat guy? Yeah, the fat guy. It was shocking but funny.

And I, for some reason, I'm drawn to that. And I know it alienates a lot of the audience. And I'm always stuck with that question of, do I broaden the audience and make this a kind of family movie, which all the other comedians do, or do I broaden the audience and make this a kind of family movie which all the other comedians do or do i narrow the audience well i think what you get when you do it your way is um you get the possibility of here's the the one downside of it even even with some of the prank movies is that you're you're going to get people who are who are smart and are willing to be open-minded enough to indulge even the most dramatically crass satire and and that type of

of over-the-topness has always been part of satire you know to push it it's almost swifty and you know or your baudelaire or any of them where you know everything is just you know that things are ripping at the seams you know and think There's blood and guts and goo. But I think the liability of it, you're going to get a lot of morons who are like, oh, shit. Oh, look at that. You're fucking on his face.

Yeah, yeah. So on that level, it is appealing to a broad audience. Yeah. Just not kids, but again, maybe morons. Yes, yeah. Not to hurt anybody. i don't like to discriminate against morons well no good the whole movie's about that yeah it's about not discriminating against morons yeah exactly exactly and what's that guy's name who plays your brother he's a mark strong like he's like an action movie yeah he's a complete well the idea with this movie was let's make it a completely authentic

action movie and my character accidentally falls into it so let's keep the genre rather than doing a parody or an action comedy let's make it an action movie that has some really funny stuff and so you went all the way you went all out with that sequence that opening sequence that introduces the action movie it was like holy shit yes so we thought like because that was some of the action comedies that i didn't really like that they go all right let's do a little bit of action in there let's get a second unit director in and it's good enough yeah and you know when we've been doing any of these movies like bull rat we wanted it to be an authentic documentary that unfortunately has this idiot kazakhstani reporter in the middle of it.

Yeah. So the idea was, there's this authentic action movie that could rival, you know, feel like a cool action movie. Right, right. But Sacha Baron Cohen's in it.

Did you direct it? No, we had Louis Leterio, who's this action director. And he's like a full-on, hardcore action director to get that kind of authenticity. Right, and it's there. And the funny thing is, playing the comedy against that or integrating authenticity right and it's there and the funny

thing is playing the comedy against that or integrating the two there's some sort of like goofy turns yes but but it's still once you buy the conceit you kind of go with it yeah and then you wait for the next like you know what the fuck yeah like you know that the with the with the what's her name Sibide what's her name ohrey Sibaday yes the girl from Precious yeah yeah yeah like like you know that there's a moment there where you're like is this right or wrong yes yeah and but what what's unique to you is that somehow or another you know this moron this fool you know is is endearing you know in in the midst of all this stuff that you know he has this weird kind of earnestness to him and all those guys who play his friends in the town and

everything. It's definitely very Pythony in a way. Yeah. So what do you want to do, man? I mean, do you want to stay doing comedy? Do you have a desire to do straight acting? I mean, I know like people make a comparison to you and Sellers and you haven't mentioned Sellers.

How do you take that comparison? Like either it's going to be andy kaufman or peter sellers i think well sellers would be the greatest comparison i could ever get i mean he i'd say it was you know python for the laugh out loud extremity but sellers was the inspiration in that i think he's the greatest comedic actor who's the commitment yeah the commitment and the believability of the characters and the subtlety, but yet they were still hilarious. You never doubted that Clouseau could exist. There was no wink to the camera. And, I mean, apparently a horrible man,

but what a performer and what a comedian. Possessed by something, yeah. I mean, yeah, I thought he was kind of inspirational. So if I could get any comparison with him, I'd be amazingly pleased. And what was the movie of his that really sort of, was it Clouseau that made you sort of like realize? As a kid, it was Clouseau.

Yeah. And I think then Strange Love. Right, right. And then Being There was amazing. You know, this kind of subtle, that kind of is a clown performance. Yeah, it is. And I think then Strange Love. And then Being There was amazing. You know, this kind of subtle. That kind of is a clown performance. Yeah, it is.

He's out of it and he's misinterpreted. And he's a child. Yeah, he's a man child. Yeah. He's a man child. And what about the comparisons to Andy? Well, I didn't grow up watching Kaufman. And in England, he wasn't really popular.

So when I came here, then I got sent some of his DVDs. And there's brilliant stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel, in a way, he's probably more of an artist than I am. In that I don't think he cared what the audience thought. And I really, deep down, I want to make people laugh. And that's why I fight to get stuff to be funny and to get big, big laughs in the audience. And I'll go to war with whichever studio has been stupid enough

to pay me money to make a movie. So, you know, they probably hate me at Sony because they go, why are you still fighting for these gags? But once I love a gag and once i fall think i've got to get this on screen i will fight tooth and nail to get the gag on screen right there's a lot of gags yeah yeah and did you at the end there was a disclaimer daniel radcliffe had nothing to do with the movie nothing to do with the movie you put him in there we stuck him in there yeah yeah and trump as well donald trump makes an appearance in the movie.

We won't say what happens to him. No, no. But that was... Either of them. We don't have to say what happens to either of them. I actually... I interviewed him once as Ali G. And I remember being in his office.

And he kept me waiting, I think, about an hour and a half, which was fine. But during that time, he was screaming so loudly. It was like, get me! Get me the mayor! Do you all got the phone? Get me the mayor! You know, he was screaming so loudly it was like get me get me the mayor do you all got the phone give me the mayor you know it was like this kind of bad villain yeah in a cheap bat in a bad batman movie yeah screaming at giuliani on the phone i just thought it was an incredible character i couldn't believe he existed yeah yeah he does in a big way right i mean could he be president i don be president? I don't think so.

I don't think so. No. I don't think so. I mean, it'd be great for comedians and great for satirists, but terrible for the world. But I think it's sort of a testament to, you know, sort of what we were talking about before about sort of, you know, mining the anger of the disenfranchised to make them complicit

in a momentum that will ultimately betray them. Yes, and he's able to do that. There was a line in The Dictator, at the end of The Dictator, the guy who plays the dictator, I mean, I play the dictator, but Admiral General Al-Adin does this speech about dictatorships, and one of the lines is, I think, as I remember, it's, you know, we can get poor people to vote against their interests. You know, one of the great things you can do in dictatorships.

And it's what clever politicians end up doing, you know, which is vote for me and I'm going to look after your interests, which are policies which prevent you from getting money. Right. You know. Exactly. Yeah. So that was in The D getting money. Right. Exactly. Yeah. So that was in The Dictator. Yeah. There was some speech at the end.

I should remember it, but I can't really. Did you write it? Yes. Yes. I mean, I wrote it. It was actually Adam McKay had the idea for that speech. And then I was kind of reading a lot of stuff at that time. There were a lot of riots going on in England

off the kind of disenfranchised. And there was the Occupy Wall Street movement at that time there were a lot of riots going on in england off the kind of disenfranchised and there was the uh occupy wall street movement at the time so it kind of influenced that speech do you want to do more uh serious stuff or what i don't know there's not really a plan no no the plan i live joke to joke really you know i really do i kind of you know think of an idea for a movie and then how do i make it as funny as i can and then how do i make the movie happen and it's unfortunately continually a battle trying to get that stuff on screen now i feel like studios particularly post the north korean hack are a lot more conservative in what they'll put on screen i think listen i think the sad thing

about the north korean hack with sony was you know it's a way for totalitarian states that have no freedom of speech to extend the sphere of their influence yeah so you know one of the great reasons why america is a great country is America is a great country is you have freedom of speech. How do you prevent freedom of speech? You have totalitarian states threaten the people who control and create entertainment with acts of terrorism and say, all right, you do anything that's going to upset us. We're going to shut your movie. We're going to shut your studio down. We're going to threaten to bomb your cinemas yeah so now in the back of studios minds they don't want to do anything to upset any incredibly powerful force whether it's north korea you know i wonder whether given this

political climate whether if i was you know a comedian from the ali g show and some you know niche hbo show and said listen i want to i walked into fox today and said listen i want to make a movie about kazakhstan i wonder whether the heads of fox would say yeah yeah we'll do the movie but we're not using a real country right that country's going to go and you know attack us you know i I wonder. Yeah, I think there is... Studios now, and I don't want to sound like the kind of liberal Jew, but studios now are generally owned by multinationals and they want to risk as little as they can

and minimize liability. So the problem with that is something like borat it's a crazy experiment i mean it was a it's a mad experiment and it could only exist with a studio that said here listen here's 14 million bucks go and do it this guy will make 14 million bucks in europe and if you die we're still going to make 40 million bucks yeah we, we're going to be fine. If you just sign this. Yeah, we're fine. Right. But you need to do something that's new. Yeah. You need to have, you know, you need to have heads of studios who feel confident.

Right. And, you know, I think that- Take chances. Yeah, and I think the heads of the studios are, you know, good people who are talented, and I think a lot of them love movies and love art. Yeah. But their hands are

slightly tied now by these you know legal departments in the you know in the multinationals that control them right right right this movie feels like what right out of the gate like the new movie the the grimsby brothers grimsby is that like right out of the gate i thought like well this is sort of a british movie yeah i Do you feel like you made it a little bit for the British audience? Yeah, it's for England. But at the beginning, Borat was a kind of Kazakhstani movie as well. So we thought, listen, we thought no one was going to ever see Borat. I mean, it was a movie about a Kazakhstani documentary.

Yeah. So how do you sell that? Oh, come on. You know that guy mean it was a movie about a kazakhstani documentary yeah so who's gonna how do you sell that oh come on you know that guy that was a great character i knew it was a good character but i didn't think anyone would watch it and it had anti-semitic content in there we thought no one would ever go and see it's huge yeah ended up being good and how do your parents feel about your work i think they like it i think they uh you know sometimes it's embarrassing for them but generally they're fully supportive and i couldn't really have done any of it without their blessing what's embarrassed them i think they found bruno quite extreme which it was i mean yeah i can't believe

actually in retrospect that a major studio released that movie i mean it had a 35 second close-up of a man's penis yeah you know it should have really been an art house movie that got released in yeah didn't you get into some trouble with a group of guys too where you almost got your ass kicked um is that in bruno yes i got i got uh there are a few different you know i i almost got killed in jerusalem actually ironically by a bunch of hasids and then there are a few different you know I almost got killed in Jerusalem actually ironically by a bunch of Hasid and then there are a few different instances I went hunting with a bunch of guys who once they realized I was gay there was some line where we're around this campfire we're on this in this kind of

private hunting estate where they have canned hunts yeah and I look into the sky and I go look at all the stars upset really just reminds you of what was a hot guy since the world doesn't that and there was a silence then from these three guys who realized that with a gay guy yeah and i'm going camping with them and i'm gonna you know be in a tent next to this they then get up they take their rifles and they load their rifles they put ammo in their rifles and my i had a researcher there and i go what's going on he goes they've you know loaded their rifles i go why and he goes well they've said that there are boars here you know and

they don't want any animals to kind of attack them at night but then i knew the rest of the scene was i was going to have to go naked into one of their tents and try and get into their tent and sleep with the guy and so um so they could have shot you thinking it was an animal yeah i mean there's a law in arkansas and a few other places i think it's called king of the castle which is when you're on your own private property if you shoot someone it's very very hard to sue them right or yeah to get legal action yes it's self-defense yes exactly so so you didn't go into the tent no i did actually but you know i think you i had at that point this dilemma i was talking to larry charles the director you know

and i'm still you know i have to stay in characters the whole time and he's going do you want to do this you know bruno do you want to do this and there's a part of me which is all right this is maybe a little bit risky then there's the other part which is i need it for the movie i've come all this way i'm in a field in the middle of arkansas at two in the morning let's finish the scene you know it doesn't seem like a crazy risk it seems like a small risk there's cameras there are still people. There are people and there are cameras there. Are they really going to, if they shoot me, they're going to have to shoot the whole crew.

Are they really going to do that? So what's the likelihood of that? Probably one in a hundred. You know, am I ready to take a one in a hundred risk? 99% risk that it's going to be fine? Yeah. So it happened a lot that your life really felt threatened. Well, I think particularly in Bruno, because it's going to be fine? Yeah. So it happened a lot, that your life really felt threatened. Well, I think particularly in Bruno,

because it's a different form of prejudice. So you have like anti-Semitism, you have racism, but homophobia means fear of the homosexual. And where there's fear, that can turn into violence. So people who don't like gay people are scared of them,

and that can transition into violence pretty quickly it's like threatening on on a it seems to be threatening on a more core primitive level exactly so there was a recent study actually where they showed people pictures of naked men and they found out that the homophobes who are most likely to use violence or use violent language against gay people were those who had some increase in tumescence yeah and blood flow to their groin yeah while show it's been seeing interesting naked men yeah so it's guys who are struggling with their sexuality who are going to go out and right right gay guys right so we would you know how does that affect us in a

kind of real way so we'd go you know let's have maybe not struggling but not you know not willing to allow it in them yes like it doesn't necessarily mean that they're they're they're probably gay it just means like they're attracted for whatever reason but that can't even live inside them well there's a you know the thing about being straight or gay they're kind of silly terms because you know it's a scale so everyone is somewhere on the scale right i'm 23 percent gay yeah oh you figured that out yeah i've worked it out we did the calculation i'm 23 percent gay you know i have been there's a good number it's a good time i got down to 17 i got up to 31 when i was doing ball rat and i had the you know testicles on my chin i was up to 31 um done that in a couple movies yeah but everyone exactly it's a it's a theme it's a motif and the you know so

everyone's on that scale somewhere sexuality it's like being black or white no one's quite black there are some people who are albino and there's some people are yeah yeah but generally people are on that scale and that's why you know it's difficult for people but so that how that affects us in a real way was let's say i'm in texas you know i know i want to go into a bar it's a biker bar and i'm i've just finished with my boyfriend i want to get laid that night right and so i want to make out with one of the guys i want to take them back home and have sex with them in the movie yeah and so we'll have like a guy who's a cop with us who we've paid. It's a great thing about America. You can pay cops to help you. So we'll go to a bar.

You obviously want to go to a rough bar. And then you say, okay, give us some of the figures of, you know, have there ever been any homicides in this bar? How many? When was the last homicide? Who committed the homicide? Are they behind bars? You know, are there any guys in there with kind of

serious you know criminal histories who could be a problem so you try and limit the amount of risk you don't want to go and die you want to go and survive and do a funny joke right so there's always what i'm always trying to do is get the funniest joke with a bit of that can be edgy but you're trying to limit the possibility that something bad can happen for you or the crew right so that's really or that or the volatility of the subject that you know like it's weird like when i had a conversation about with my producer about that in most cases the the people that were you know the the the pawns in this thing you thing, that were being duped somehow, usually on one side or another, were trying to behave properly.

Yeah. That was what's really interesting, is that within whatever scope they could, they wanted to be accommodating and polite. Yes. Apart from Impruno. Impruno, that was more, accommodating and polite yes and yes apart from in bruno in bruno that was more because the character uh was more unlikable we intentionally made him unlike we thought okay we've got to put him in

increasingly yeah because you hate that guy immediately whether he's gay or not he's just annoying yeah and and he's like you don't know like for an american you don't really know where he's from you did and and the fact that like there were actually people that you could find that didn't know he was gay immediately is baffling to me. Like their experience with that flamboyant character who is clearly out and there's no way you can not, you know what I mean? Yeah, well, I was just thinking about that.

We did one interview that never made the air with this neo-Nazi guy who actually I think is on death row now. He ended up a couple of years ago going and trying to shoot some people. He murdered three people in some Jewish community center. Oh, my God. And we went and interviewed him. And the idea was I was going there and I was going to give him publicity for his little neo-Nazi organization.

And, you know, you've got to get celebrities involved. Why don't you get Woody Allen to be the head of your organization? Because Woody Allen is a Jew. And the idea was I'd go into his place. And at some point, my assistant would give me a wheatgrass shot, and accidentally he dropped the wheatgrass shot on my white trousers, and I'd have to take my white trousers off. This is a Dodge and Gabbana.

This is the worst, 5,000 euros. Go and find a fucking dry cleaner now and get them dry cleaned. And so I would have to do the rest of the interview in my G-string with this neo-Nazi guy and, you know, have him take him around. And eventually I go, you know, show me. I want to know how modern day Nazi lives. Show me around the house. Come on.

Show me those cribs, you know. And eventually he took me into his bedroom and I'm there in my G-string. And my boyfriend in the movie runs in and goes okay oh so you guys are stupid yeah you just sucked his dick and i go what are you talking about but i haven't been doing that at all i guess so why are you in your g-string with this guy in his bedroom explain yourself and this guy obviously got a little bit angry and threatened and tried to punch the other guy and uh but i'm saying not funny not in the end it was too extreme because the problem is if you get somebody who's that full of hate

you actually don't you feel uncomfortable in the room and you feel uncomfortable actually watching them on screen right um so uncomfortable... Uncomfortable because it's threatening or because it's fucking tragic. Well, they're tragic. You're giving them ultimately a platform for their vicious, disgusting views. Right. And sometimes the air of underlying violence,

and I could sense with this guy, he'd already just come out of jail for some plot to overthrow government and trying to blow up some building right and his whole place was full of machine guns and ammunition in the kitchen yeah you know you know that somebody's pretty extreme if they've got ammunition in the kitchen yeah there was just an unpleasant air about the whole movie right yeah but in that so that that that that's adrenaline tipping towards the negative yes exactly and now i i remember him showing me photos on the phone i was like who's that guy he goes that guy's my son i remember looking at the sun i go that sun is

going to come after me at some point and then a week afterwards we heard that the sun had been shot dead by police he shot a police officer so you were in real evil we were in really but this was a bad guy and right you you sense that sometimes i think so you know i've had the unfortunate experience of being around some people who who were kind of really bad people yeah and they never really make it to you know the cut on screen yeah yeah i can't imagine it so how do you exit a situation like that like okay thank you no well it turned violent and i ended up trying to protect my the guy playing my boyfriend because he he was he'd never been in one of these situations beforehand and so you're a movie situation or

either a movie it's his first movie in his first undercover kind of movie situation and suddenly there's this guy trying to he's saying i'm going to kick you in the face you know and uh for for a situation like that we hire a you know you hire a kind of bodyguard right and you know there's a certain amount they can do so we hire a guy and his job is um he's a bit like knobby actually he's like this northern bloke and his job his job is to prevent me from being arrested because once i was arrested it would mean that i couldn't get back into the country and get a visa so we're in kansas and the police find out that i'm there and we do a few things and police go okay anything else you know we're going to arrest him and they let us know and so we we still have to do a few bits so we're in this hotel room and there's a bit in bruno

where i wake up i get drunk after failing in this biker bar for to make love to anyone uh i end up drunk with my assistant we wake up and we're in this room in this hotel room and we're chained to each other in this kind of snm kind of crazy gear yeah he's got a toilet brush in his mouth and there is you know there's feces smeared on the wall and it's a pretty extreme room there's a there's a pedal powered fucking machine in the corner yeah and it's disgusting the room's disgusting we call down to and i'm freaked out i've made love to my to my assistant who i hate yeah he's the guy at the end who i end up making love to it's a rom-com yeah sure um and so we call down and i get the manager up i need to get you know has anyone got a key and they come into the room and they see all this disgusting stuff in the room

and they call the cops and so immediately when the cops are called this guy's job is to get me out off the hotel without getting arrested because we know cancerous police have made it clear so we always have an escape van and the escape van is waiting in the alleyway at the back and we have an escape route and his plan is he like unlocks us and we start running to the um service elevator get in the service elevator which doors are closing suddenly the hotel security open the doors and they say get out and we've got the police downstairs they're arriving we run away from them start running down the um fire you know the staircase run down we're on the 17th floor and the security guard's like follow me follow me

come on follow me and we're running down this corridor and i'm in you know g string and my friend's got you know my co-star's got this toilet brush from his mouth and you know still got chains and this extreme snm outfit and they're kind of guys painting this you know the 17th floor of this kansas hotel and he's going come on run run run and he's we run we run to the end of the corridor and i go where where are we going he goes there's the cops downstairs out the window get out i go out so he lifts open the window and there's a rickety old fire escape and he goes get out out so we will stop running down this rickety old fire escape dressed in this crazy snm stuff we get down and fire escapes in kansas they only get down right they have to drop the yes yeah so we couldn't drop the steps we get down and fire escapes in kansas they only get down right they have to drop the

yes yeah so we couldn't drop the steps we're down to the you know like 15 drop the ladder right i think we're 10 feet or 12 feet i'm like how do we get i can see the getaway car yeah and um he goes jump i go why he goes jump so they're these two african-american ladies who are like having a little cigarette break and from the heavens appears me i jump in front of them wearing kind of heels and this crazy snm stuff and then my friend with the toilet brush in his mouth i crack i break my heel and we jump into the car the van disappears we get out of the state you know we always have to get out of the state and um you know unfortunately i had to shut down the movie because this idiot had made me jump out of a bloody 10 foot fire escape so i broke my i broke

my heel no you did so we shut down for three months so now it's one of the reasons why you don't do this anymore because maybe your wife said know, I don't want you to die for a fucking joke. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's part of it. I mean, one day again, a lot of these stories are in. Don't want you to end up in jail because of a fucking joke.

Well, one time in New York, we ended up doing a bunch of stuff in Borat in the same. I think it was a precinct. It was all to do around the park, you know, Madison and park. I don't really know, but sort of Upper West Side. Yeah, it's kind of a very, the fancy area of New York.

You know, Central Park kind of area. Unfortunately, that was all within one precinct. And so they kept on getting police reports that we're there. And at one point we did one scene where borat you know goes into a hotel he has to leave and i take my bag and i take all the furniture out the room as well they call the cops and the the police uh i don't know whatever you call him captain in charge of that precinct knew it was me and was getting increasingly frustrated.

And that's a really bad thing to do. You don't want to piss off some police guy. So he decided he's getting me arrested. And what they did was, the police are on their way. I disappear as always. What they did was they arrested the producer of the movie and the assistant director. they took them into the cells

and she you know she was like a 31 year old woman uh monica levinson and the assistant director actually you know he was a real gentleman he said i'm gonna go with you to jail and they gave her a really rough night and then we get a call which was if sasha comes down we will release everyone and we call up my lawyer the guy with the yeah in india starving india and he's like it's a trap they want to arrest you and they're going to get publicity if they're the guys who arrested ali g and you have to get out of state now so you know i get back to the hotel and i i go baby we've got to get out of the state now we're going to get out you know pack pack pack let's go to your wife yeah so there to get out of the state now. We've got to get out. You know, pack, pack, pack, and let's go. To your wife.

Yeah, so there were a couple of times over the years where she had to, you know. You know, she came down once and set. We had a baby at the time. And she's like, oh, I'm going to visit my husband on set. And I think we were in Alabama and there was a cop chase. They were chasing me in a van and i i developed this technique of being able to direct the driver while being on the floor like okay tell me what's in front of you go right go left and so there's a cop chase and she's listening in on the walkie-talkie and we had a baby he's like all right i'm not visiting set set anymore. We had one time when I was doing Bullrat where I'm interviewing this woman in,

I think it was in Tennessee. And I go, excuse me, can I please use your laboratories? And she goes, of course. And I go to the bathroom and I come back out after 10 minutes and I'm wearing her towel and using her toothbrush. I'd had a shower, my hair's wet. And she calls the police and she throws me out of the good fair enough yeah i don't blame her yeah she throws me out of the room locks the front door and i'm outside the door but she's got my

costume borat's only costume inside and i've got her property which is her town and i hear the cop cars coming they're getting closer and closer and i go what do i do what do i do because if i take if i run in the car it's theft um so anyway i ended up sort of jumping in the car and we had to negotiate the police took the costume and oh they got the costume and you yeah and i'm speaking yeah we made an exchange and i'm on the floor going what do i do do i return the town because the guy in india yeah to the guy in india yeah where's that movie so we're in kansas one time again this is after the just before the day of breaking the heel yeah and uh we decide there's this um there's this group called God Hates Fags. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Phelps.

Yeah, the Phelps family. Not a nice family. And so, again, the cops say they knew we were there. They know we were in Kansas. And they go, all right, we're arresting Sasha. We know he's there. And God Hates Fags heard that I was going to do something against them. We knew they were doing a demonstration.

And the cops say, all right, they let our cop know we see him he's arrested and that's it and they shut down the movie so i really need the scene and i'm thinking what do i do here you know and you know our cop says they've given you a warning a fair warning yeah you should leave the state now and i go all right what i wanted to do is uh they found out that the cops were circling the god hate fag demonstration so i said all right time how long we've got between every circle they time and it's like three minutes 30 seconds yeah so i go all right what we're going to do is when they pass the god hates facts you're going to drop me off at that moment when they cross past the corner so we're out of our eyesight doing a recon so we've got like three minutes or two minutes 50 to do what and you're and i'm going

to do a quick little sketch you know and then i want another car that's waiting and i'll go from one car to the other car so and somebody needs to kind of give me you know hold up things like 30 seconds you know and so we did it we managed to do the sketch and jump in and we had like a a bond lawyer hiding in the bushes in case I was arrested to get me out on you know uh on bail immediately just trying to think what this feels like it's just sort of like you know that you you definitely the balance you had to strike and this weird relationship you have with the law and then them knowing you on top of that and not willing to indulge you like even

knowing that like if you're going to walk out with furniture from the hotel you're going to bring it back yeah and but but the hotel's like we don't want to indulge this fuck. Yeah. We're running a business here. Exactly. It's not our job to be his fucking, you know, so you had to negotiate all this and yet do these little recons that, you know,

how are you going to beat the fucking excitement of that? Yeah, you can't. It's hard for me. That's why I do a lot of improv on set now and a lot of... Yeah. And are there states you can't go back to?

I think only sedona returning technically i'm a felon in sedona um i think other states are kind of fine i mean we're going to russia in a couple of weeks which will be interesting that's my first time back since doing borat and after borat the prime minister of kazakhstan nashibai if he contacted the british prime minister who's tony blair at the time he then later on admitted to me nashibai said all right i want you to stop this guy from releasing his film i want you to end ball rat and he said well listen it's not a dictatorship here i can't like do that and then there's some other... Did you talk to Tony Blair about it?

Yeah, Tony Blair contacted me about... A year after, he had to leave office. And he said, you know, you put me in a difficult position because we were doing trade with Kazakhstan. And you made me... You know, you kind of embarrassed me. He thought it was quite funny. So that's the buffon.

That's the buffon, yeah. Exactly. there you are yeah and you're going back to Russia? so we're going back to Russia to promote the movie but it's the first time I've gone there since

which will be interesting if I don't come back it'd be horrible if you got arrested now yeah it's after it's all said and done yeah exactly

well I got invited to kazakhstan during the promotional stuff for bora because they realized at one point let's embrace him fox got worried that i was because they were kind of death threats and yeah so they hired like specialist security who are basically usually complete morons yeah you know some guy was swimming in sydney during the publicity tour and this guy didn't know i was going to go swimming and he starts walking in his full clothes into the into the water you know so these guys who are trained in the army to look after

oh i'm not letting him go uh so they did like a security assessment of me going to kazakhstan they said it's impossible to secure you because even if one in ten people wants to hurt you yeah you just can't yeah so you can't do it no all right well take care of yourself will you thank you very much well listen now I'm doing kind of straight ahead movie uh you know yeah it's a movie so it's easier yeah yeah yeah with Scorsese you don't get in trouble right right right would you do it Scorsese I did this movie called Hugo oh that's right that's a big movie it's a kid's movie yeah yeah but but you're i have a feeling like like i think the the only thing that's going to really stop you from doing this shit again eventually will be your family yes yeah you know it's good to talk to you well thank you very much for having me on indulging me and letting me spout out all these long stories

that are great probably a slightly repetitive actually no one's heard them no one's heard them you're right but they're on the theme aren't they no we covered a lot of stuff and this is a really nice long interview it was a pleasure talking yeah pleasure pleasure being here good good coffee actually good thank you mate right sasha baron cohen Couldn't get him to stop talking. I didn't want to, but he was ready. Maybe it was that coffee. I should remember what that coffee was.

You can also go to WTFpod.com for all your WTF pod needs. I, you know, posters, stuff, things. I'll play a little guitar. Thank you. Boomer lives! But iced tea and ice cream? Yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats. Get almost almost anything. Order now. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. It's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means.

I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative.