Sacha Baron Cohen made Borat 2 because he ‘felt democracy was in peril’
Actor said he brought character back to discourage people from voting for Donald Trump
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Your support makes all the difference.Sacha Baron Cohen has said he made Borat 2 ahead of the US general election because he “felt democracy was in peril”.
The film, which came out last October, targeted the Trump administration’s bungling response to the coronavirus pandemic and the fascism among his supporters. It also included a now-infamous interview with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
In a new interview with Variety, Baron Cohen said: “I felt democracy was in peril, I felt people’s lives were in peril and I felt compelled to finish the movie. The movie was originally about the danger of Trump and Trumpism. What coronavirus demonstrated was that there’s a lethal effect to his spreading of lies and conspiracy theories.”
He added: “I don’t want to egotistically imply that people would watch Borat and not vote for Trump, but that was the aim.”
Baron Cohen believes it’s time to hang up his character’s handlebar moustache.
“I brought Borat out because of Trump,” he said. “There was a purpose to this movie, and I don’t really see the purpose to doing it again. So yeah, he’s locked away in the cupboard.”
Borat 2 actor Maria Bakalova recently revealed she was “kind of scared” while filming the scene with Giuliani.
Bakalova played Borat’s daughter Tutar in the film, and at one point pretends to interview Giuliani for television. After the two retreat to a hotel room, Giuliani is seen in the edited sequence seemingly putting a hand down his trousers.
Giuliani has said he was never “inappropriate” during the interaction, and that he was “tucking in [his] shirt after taking off the recording equipment”.
Baron Cohen was among the many celebrities to react with disgust at Trump’s tweets about the storming of the Capitol on Wednesday 6 January.
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