Sacha Baron Cohen: 'I've had threats since Ali G. We are in a very violent time'

• Published date: 22 February 2021
• Author: Catherine Shoard
• Date: 22 February 2021
• Publication title: Irish Times: Web Edition Articles (Dublin, Ireland)

Seven months ago Sacha Baron Cohen was in the back of a speeding ambulance. It was an escape car, and he was fleeing a gun rally. The Borat producers had chosen the ambulance as it could blend in, accommodate a small film crew and, if necessary, hasten a trip to hospital.

Baron Cohen – dressed as Borat, himself disguised as a country singer – had just led the crowd of far-right conspiracy theorists in a singalong. At first they happily joined in: "Obama, what we gonna do? / Inject him with the Wuhan flu." Then one or two smelled a rat. Then they all stormed the stage.

"I was watching on a monitor in a bulletproof vest," says Peter Baynham, one of the film's writers. "I saw a guy heading towards him with a pistol, and I realised Sacha didn't know." The security team went on high alert. But even as the danger became plain, says Baynham, "you could see Sacha thinking, Did I nail that last verse? He's obsessive about getting as good a take as possible. That's why he might have hung on a little bit too long."

Baron Cohen then legged it – he's 6ft 3in, which comes in handy – and jumped on to the ambulance. The door was torn open again from outside. Baron Cohen used his entire body weight to heave it shut and they drove off.

This was business as usual on the shoot for Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, which saw a triumphant and topical return for Baron Cohen's bumbling Kazakh reporter. In Georgia a dozen drunk fathers grabbed their guns after a graphic fertility dance performed by Borat and his daughter, Tutar, at a debutante ball.

At last February's Conservative Political Action Conference, in the United States, security captured and interrogated a mysterious Donald Trump impersonator who had interrupted Mike Pence's speech to offer him the woman over his shoulder.

In July the NYPD was summoned to a hotel bedroom after a man in "a crazy pink transgender outfit" burst in on Rudy Giuliani as he was debriefing with a young TV journalist.

"It was the hardest movie to make that I've ever heard about," says Baron Cohen. "Maybe apart from Fitzcarraldo. The director was taking risks very few directors in the history of film have taken: being chased by an angry mob, armed to the teeth. When people are triggered in a crowd, certain things can happen they wouldn't do individually."

Today, Baron Cohen, who is 49, is speaking from the safety of the home he shares with his wife, Isla Fisher, and their three children. Palm trees wave behind his head. He's having a croissant. On this side of the Atlantic I'm ready for bed. He won't say where he is, for security reasons.

"I've had threats since Ali G, and in my experience publicising them only does one thing: lead to more threats. We are in a very violent time. If you're protesting against racism you're going to upset some racists."

Baron Cohen is the most inspired and inventive figure in big-screen comedy so far this century. He is the first British comedian to crack American cinema since Peter Sellers or, perhaps, Monty Python. Yet – or, perhaps, because – of this, he has only given a handful of print interviews out of character.

There are a number of reasons he's doing it today: an awards push, a record-straightening, an opportunity to impress on people the need for urgent social, political and technological revolution (of which more later). I also wonder if he ever thinks, Just in case. Everyone I speak to about Baron Cohen says they worry about him. They all gawp at just how literally he puts his life on the line.

"There was no question he had taken his mind to the place of, what if people try to kill him," says Eddie Redmayne, his costar in The Trial of the Chicago 7. He recently asked Baron Cohen if he had been able to sleep before a big day on Borat. Not much, he replied. You keep running through what might go wrong.

One morning Baron Cohen had a panic attack. He was in a remote log cabin with two Trump-supporting conspiracy theorists, Jim and Jerry, at the start of a planned five-day stay. "It was 6am, and I started pacing around my room, thinking, How am I going to keep in character? They're going to see through me. It was bloody terrifying."

The previous morning the film's director, Jason Woliner, realised that although the pair hadn't heard of Borat, they did know of Kazakhstan. Cue two hours of Baron Cohen furiously mugging up on Belarus. "There was so much reality setting off camera," says Woliner. "No one would ever imagine a fake would go to such lengths." Borat's clothes were never laundered. "All washing was prohibited. He always smelled terrible. And we concocted a spray to heighten it."

Every second had to be consistent, says Baron Cohen, every move – sitting, eating, drinking – immaculate. "If they went to the toilet after Borat they had to believe somebody from a very primitive central Asian country had just been." What does that mean? "There was some potpourri in there, and I chucked that in. And I can't remember whether I flushed."

For Baynham, monitoring the log-cabin shoot was like watching "a very strange experiment". "I've worked with Sacha for 16 years, but I still get taken in by Borat. Sometimes you'd think, Is he doing a bit, is he getting their trust or has he gone full Daniel Day-Lewis? But at the same time he was also himself, a month on, in the edit suite. So he'd find a way, in Borat's voice, to tell the crew we needed to get a wide-angle shot or that the camera was too high."

The assumption was that Borat's retirement could not be reversed. Had the success of his first outing – and 2009's Brüno – not made future dupes...