-Our first guest tonight is a talented actor and comedian
you know from his work as Ali G., Bruno, and Borat.
He wrote, produced, and starred in "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,"
for which he received an Oscar nomination
and WGA award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
He is also nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor
for his performance as Abbie Hoffman
in "The Trial of the Chicago 7."
Let's take a look.
-You know why you're on trial here?
-We carried certain ideas across state lines.
Not machine guns or drugs or little girls.
Ideas.
When we crossed from New York to New Jersey to Pennsylvania
to Ohio to Illinois, we had certain ideas.
And for that, we were gassed,
beaten, arrested, and put on trial.
-Please welcome to the show Sacha Baron Cohen.
How are you, Sacha? -Hi, good.
How's it going, Seth? -It's going very well.
It's incredible to me not only how wonderful
both these performances are, but the fact that you were
doing them simultaneously is shocking to me
because it's -- obviously, they're two very different sets.
One is very controlled, and then, of course, you have Borat.
-Yes. I mean, on the set of "Chicago 7,"
you can go to craft services,
and, you know, you can go to a trailer.
On the set of "Borat,"
you're basically running away from the police.
So, you meet in between. -[ Laughs ]
Well, it's so funny, because, of course, that's what
Abbie Hoffman goes through in real life.
And it's what you put yourself through as an actor as Borat.
You know, Abbie Hoffman was someone who used clowning
to sort of make political points.
Very different from Borat, obviously,
in what they were aiming to do,
but there are some similarities there.
-Yeah, I mean -- I almost found Abbie
this really inspirational character.
I first read about him when I was in university
when I was about 20.
And he was really hilarious, brilliantly clever, and --
but fundamentally, like, this really brave,
courageous activist who, you know, actually was ready
to die to fight injustice, which is not a very funny thing
to say on a late-night show, but I've done it.
-Well, it's interesting, though, because I do feel like
this "Borat" was certainly more political than the last one.
And in a way, you were putting yourself
in fairly dangerous situations.
You must realize, like, there is some parallel now
to what Abbie Hoffman was doing a long time ago.
-Well, I never really wanted to do another Borat movie,
and then, Donald Trump came along,
and I got increasingly angry with some of the things
that were going on -- the Muslim ban, et cetera.
And then, it's coming up to the election,
and I felt I needed to put the gray suit on again just to,
you know, put out something to show that I didn't agree.
And we really just wanted it to come out before the election.
So the whole crew put themselves through crazy experiences
and put themselves at real risk.
-So, you know, obviously, you have just
the logistical challenges of something like CPAC,
which I want to ask about in a minute,
and then you have the challenges of writing a script.
But, of course, the core of Borat
is this performance and this character you become.
And you went to clowning school.
Was that actually in France?
-That was a French teacher called Philippe Gaulier.
And luckily, it was in London.
People would fly from around the world.
There were people from Australia flown to -- to study with him.
And then, basically, the first thing you would do
is you put some clown music, you put on your red nose,
go around the room.
If he hit his drum, you would have to sit down.
And that was it.
That was the end of your exercise.
And you'd have people who'd flown in from Australia,
the clown music goes, stops the clown music,
they start speaking, and he hits his drum,
'cause they're not funny.
And they would burst into tears and hate him.
-Very sad. Just sad to think of anyone
crying in their full clown costume.
-Exactly. Exactly. Sad clown.
-Is this a -- is this a clown teacher who is proud of the work
that you have done in the years
since you were under his tutelage?
-Well, I'm still in contact with him,
and I'll call him up, and I'll go, "What do you think?
How was that?" and he'll often go,
"That was [bleep]" [ Laughter ]
"It was not good. You are not funny.
We did not like this character." You know, so...
Yeah, it keeps -- he's very good at keeping me down.
-Is it true that, even before Ali G.,
you worked on a kids show?
-It was a -- I was bizarrely,
given my lack of personality, the host of a show.
Admittedly, it was for teenagers,
but I wanted to get out of the job and be a comedian.
But it was --
I didn't know anyone in London who had that job.
I didn't even know any actors.
So I basically started doing these little characters
live on the TV show.
So I would go out and shoot beforehand.
And the idea was they'd play it and react to what was going on.
And one of the characters actually was Borat.
So, first time I ever took him out
was at a fox-hunting rally in London
outside the House of Parliament.
It was a bunch of members of the upper class going out
to say that they should keep fox hunting,
because it's an important English tradition.
And I went out and basically pretended to be from Moldova,
and I was, "Hello. I'm from Moldova telebisk.
In my country, we hunt Jews.
We give them a head start, and then we hunt them.
You think we should do it here?"
And they'd say, "Well, I suppose if it was --
if it was a fair start, at least 20 or 30 minutes, then yes."
And, yeah, so that was the birth of Ali G. and Borat,
and eventually, I left that kids show.
Obviously, everyone at the kids show hated it.
By the way, when I put those -- when I actually put those things
on the TV show, I immediately got brought in
to the head of the show,
and he said, "Do that again and you are fired."
And, in fact, they not only fired me,
they shut down the entire channel.
[ Laughter ]
-Well, that's a nice legacy.