Even after years in the spotlight, there's still a lot of mystery to Sacha Baron Cohen,
and much about the comic many casual viewers wouldn't know. Here's a look at some of the
most interesting and least known bits and pieces about Baron Cohen's life.
Baron Cohen wanted to be a performer since childhood, having been most influenced by
actor and comedian Peter Sellers. Baron Cohen told The Guardian:
"He was this incredibly realistic actor, who was also hilarious and who managed to bridge
the gap between comedy and satire."
It's an easy influence to understand: Sellers, who claimed he had no personality outside
his characters, wouldn't just act his roles, he'd become them.
"Sir, I have a plan. Mein Fuhrer, I can walk!"
When he was 12, Baron Cohen formed a breakdancing troupe specifically so they could perform
at his bar mitzvah. During his teenage years, he wrote and performed many sketches as part
of a youth group, including one with his brothers: "The Schvitzing Brothers." Baron Cohen described
the sketch on the podcast WTF with Marc Maron, saying:
"[It] was about how these Hasidic Jews get so hot 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."
In college, Baron Cohen joined Footlights, Cambridge University's theater club. After
graduating, he gave himself five years to make it as a performer, and spent some time
working for small TV stations, where he developed a character who'd later become Ali G.
While he doesn't consider himself particularly religious, Baron Cohen's Jewish identity is
a large part of his limited public persona. He keeps Shabbat when he can, not working
Friday evening through Saturday evening, and attends synagogue a few times a year. He also
keeps kosher whenever possible, once grilling a waiter about an appetizer during a Rolling
Stone interview to make sure there was no shellfish or pork.
His Jewish identity goes beyond traditional observances. Baron Cohen worked at a kibbutz
in northern Israel during a gap year before university. He wrote his undergraduate thesis
on the alliance between Black groups and Jewish people during the civil rights movement, traveling
America and using the ADL's archives to complete his research. He also speaks fluent Hebrew,
the language he actually uses when playing Borat. Yes, that's right a famously antisemitic
character is speaking Hebrew.
"High five. Hahaha."
Borat isn't just a funny character Baron Cohen sees him as a means to an end. He's not just
showing that people have intolerant views he's showing that many are indifferent, a
far more dangerous trait. This is best illustrated by Da Ali G Show's most infamous segment:
Borat singing the song "In My Country There Is Problem" at a bar in Tucson, Arizona. By
the end of the song, most of the bar is clapping and cheering.
Baron Cohen told Rolling Stone:
"Borat essentially works as a tool. By himself being anti-Semitic, he lets people lower their
guard and expose their own prejudice, whether it's anti-Semitism or an acceptance of anti-Semitism."
"What is the best gun to defend from a Jew?"
"I would recommend either a nine millimeter or a .45."
He recognized that the "In My Country There Is Problem" sketch was controversial, but
that helped prove his point:
"To me it revealed something about that bar in Tucson. And the question is: Did it reveal
that they were anti-Semitic? Perhaps. But maybe it just revealed that they were indifferent
to anti-Semitism."
This assertion was reinforced when the Forward reached out to the Country West manager, who
said:
"The only thing we were told was that he was from Kaka-kaka-stan or something."
A bar supervisor told Tucson Weekly that she wasn't worried, saying:
"You see worse things on TV, and there are bigger issues to address."
It's easy to divide Sacha Baron Cohen's career into pre-Borat and post-Borat, but that misses
a more specific milestone. By his own estimation, winning the Golden Globe for Borat was the
moment his career changed.
Baron Cohen was given the award over heavy hitters and established actors like Johnny
Depp and Aaron Eckhardt. He then spent almost his entire speech talking about the movie's
infamous naked fight scene, likely the only time the phrase "anus and testicles" were
said at the Golden Globes. But even though he made a joke out of the victory, for him,
it was no joke.
Baron Cohen told the Toronto Star that winning, quote, "broke me out from being just a pure
comedian into something larger." The award was proof positive that there was a performance
behind Borat. It helped spearhead a serious acting career that saw Baron Cohen work with
Martin Scorsese and Tim Burton not long after donning the grey suit.
One of the first real prestigious roles Baron Cohen took on post-Borat was Station Inspector
Gustave in Martin Scorsese's Hugo. After working largely in comedy, Baron Cohen didn't know
what to expect, telling Georgia Straight:
"I expected him to be an auteur, and he is, but I think that part of his power and the
reason why his films are so successful is that he is ready to collaborate fully with
his actors."
The two men worked together on fleshing out Gustave. The script originally just mentioned
that Gustav had a fixation with catching children and sending them to the orphanage, but Baron
Cohen wanted to find a motive for these actions, and pitched that he might be a war veteran.
"You see, I was injured in the war, and it will never heal. Good day, Mademoiselle."
Baron Cohen pitched several scenes himself as well, including the one when his character
takes a bath with a dog. He said of Scorsese:
"He was totally ready to try out any idea, however ludicrous the suggestion, which was
worrying to the producers."
Baron Cohen attended the 2012 Oscars red carpet in character as Admiral General Aladeen to
promote The Dictator. He carried around an urn that he claimed contained the ashes of
Kim Jong-il. In a moment that made headlines around the world, he then spilled the ashes
on Ryan Seacrest during an interview before being escorted away.
What's less known about that moment:
"Do you think that I'm lucky? Is this a vision of luck?"
Seacrest wasn't the original target.
The E! correspondent gave more insight into the incident on his radio show later that
year, saying he ran into Baron Cohen's wife, Isla Fisher, backstage at Saturday Night Live,
and she apologized for her husband. Baron Cohen was doing a walk-on cameo as Aladeen
for a Weekend Update segment, and as soon as the segment was over, he ran over to Seacrest
and broke character to apologize. Seacrest explained:
"Originally he said that they were going to spill whatever it was in that urn on George
Clooney. Someone decided that wasn't a great idea because he was up for a lot of nominations,
it was a big night that night. Then they somehow spun the wheel of tragedy and landed on my
name."
"He was either gonna do that to me or George Clooney, right?"
Rami Malek’s Oscar-winning turn as Freddie Mercury has led many to forget that Sacha
Baron Cohen was attached to star in a Queen biopic for years. Between Baron Cohen's ability
to get lost in a role and Borat's Mercury-esque mustache, the casting almost made too much
sense. He signed on around 2010 and departed in 2013 after he and the surviving members
of Queen couldn't agree on the movie's direction. Band members suggested that Baron Cohen was
either too recognizable or they had worries the movie would become a joke. Three years
later, both sides aired more specific grievances in detail publicly.
During an interview with Howard Stern in March of 2016, Baron Cohen claimed that an unnamed
member of Queen said Freddie would die halfway through the movie. The second half would be,
quote, "see[ing] how the band carries on from strength to strength."
"Not one person is going to see a movie where the lead character dies from AIDS and then
you carry on."
Freddie, in his estimation, had too many amazing and often obscene stories to die off mid-movie,
but Queen, quote, "wanted to protect their legacy as a band."
Brian May responded via an interview with Daily Mail a month later. He accused Baron
Cohen of lying to the press, denying that they wanted to, quote, "sugar coat" the band's
history and said:
"We decided he wasn't right for the role for very good reasons, which will become apparent
if you watch what he's done recently."
"Guys? Guys. We've got to carry on."
No character in Baron Cohen's Showtime series Who Is America? was darker than Gio Monaldo.
A billionaire playboy who dove into the most vile parts of society, he managed to get a
lot of awful people to agree to awful things. Baron Cohen revealed to Deadline, however,
that there was one interview that went too far even for him.
Baron Cohen wanted to find out how guys like Harvey Weinstein got away with criminal behavior.
As Gio, he interviewed a Las Vegas concierge who claimed to have worked for billionaires
and politicians. During the interview, Gio implied he had molested an eight-year-old
boy and fully expected the concierge to walk out. Instead, he stayed and offered to put
Gio in touch with a lawyer who could silence the boy. The interview ended darker still:
Gio asked for a "date" to be arranged with a boy, and the concierge said he had a contact
who could do it.
The production team immediately handed the footage over to the FBI, given that they might
have just uncovered a child sex trafficking ring in Las Vegas. Despite the outrageous
nature of the footage, Baron Cohen had seen more than enough and decided not to include
it in the series, saying:
"It was too dark and wrong. In a journalistic way it was fascinating, but it was so extreme
and so dark that it was too unsettling for the audience."
Baron Cohen often gets sued over his work, but the suits almost never succeed. Anyone
interviewed famous or layman sign legal releases that prevent them from bringing claims against
the producers. Even if the interview itself is deceptive, the target has ample opportunity
to review the release. Public figures have even more of an uphill battle the burden of
proof for defamation is much higher for the already famous, and famous people can't exactly
defame themselves.
Even lawsuits for fraud are likely to backfire. As entertainment lawyer John Rosenberg told
The New York Times:
"If I come on to a television show believing that it's a serious, political, issues-oriented
format instead of this sort of satirical presentation, and I make a racist or misogynistic comment,
Sacha Baron Cohen didn't defraud me into making that statement."
"Are women slaves in Russia?"
"No. Do you have slaves here?"
"No. We wish. We wish."
There was, however, one case when Baron Cohen's camp was in the wrong.
In Brüno, the title character interviews Ayman Abu Aita, a Palesitinian man labeled
as a leader of militia group al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. This was a lie: Abu Aita is a Christian
Palestinian, a grocer by trade, a non-violent activist by choice, and has no association
with any paramilitary groups. Abu Aita sued seeking damages, and unlike everyone else
had a case: Brüno never used Abu Aita's own words against him and labeled him incorrectly
without his consent. The suit was later settled "to the mutual satisfaction" of all parties.
Baron Cohen introduced Jojo Rabbit at the 2020 Golden Globes by saying:
"The hero of this next movie is a naive misguided child who spreads Nazi propaganda and only
has imaginary friends. His name is Mark Zuckerberg."
After some shocked laughs, he joked that was the leftover intro to The Social Network.
This made headlines, but is only the tip of the iceberg with regard to Baron Cohen's battle
against social media and its complicity in spreading fake information.
Baron Cohen has long called for greater government regulation of social media. The most prominent
example of this was his acceptance speech after being given the ADL's International
Leadership Award in November of 2019. He spoke about the dangerous indifference of Facebook,
Google, Alphabet, YouTube, and Twitter the six main owners of which he named the Silicon
Six. He broke down in detail how just a handful of companies have become, quote, "the greatest
propaganda machine in history," and said:
"Its entire business model relies on generating more engagement, and nothing generates more
engagement than lies, fear and outrage."
Baron Cohen saved most of his ire for Zuckerberg, who'd spoken out against regulation of social
media the previous month and said that while he found Holocaust denial disgusting he wouldn't
remove it from Facebook because people get things wrong..
"It's like we're living in the Roman Empire, and Mark Zuckerberg is Caesar. At least that
would explain his haircut."
Baron Cohen was so serious about this that he later got the speech published in the Washington
Post.
Sacha Baron Cohen makes much of his living by irritating people, which means that he's
put in a lot of dangerous situations. The MMA scene at the end of Brüno saw a crowd
yell slurs and throw chairs at him, and he only survived the incident by escaping through
a trapdoor.
The rodeo scene in Borat was even more hostile than depicted in the film. A contemporaneous
report from The Roanoke Times claims that the booing was so loud that front office staff
could hear it. The rodeo producer realized the situation was a hoax of some sort, so
he escorted everyone out and advised them to leave before a riot started.
A setup in Who Is America? saw Baron Cohen pitch "the largest mosque outside the middle
east" to a racist crowd in Kingman, Arizona. Baron Cohen outlined three precautions: audiences
had to check weapons, a bodyguard was onsite, and Baron Cohen himself was given a bulletproof
clipboard.
The production of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm was his most dangerous yet, and not just because
of the pandemic. He wrote in Time that he wore a bulletproof vest while performing at
a Three Percenter Rally. He rushed to his getaway car after organizers stormed the stage,
only to have his car surrounded and the door pulled open before he escaped.
"You really give 100 and maybe even 30 percent for these films."
"Yeah, I'm probably, I probably have a mental problem."
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