Isla Fisher explains the true cost of being married to Sacha Baron Cohen
'Then suddenly my husband popped his head out of the animatronic elephant's vagina'
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Your support makes all the difference.Her husband is known for undertaking outlandish roles and continuously pushing the boundaries both in film and what is acceptable in society. Now, Isla Fisher has told how the various alter-egos of Sacha Baron Cohen have at times crept into her personal life too.
Fisher and Baron Cohen have been married for six years and together for 14, meaning Fisher has been by his side while he has played a middle-class white man from Staines who speaks Patois, a Pamela Anderson-obsessed Kazakhstani journalist and a dictator.
Unsurprisingly, these roles have not come without their stories and awkward consequenes.
“My dad and stepmum flew out to Cape Town, as they really wanted to see Sacha working, but I neglected to check the call sheet,” Fisher told Square Mile magazine. “I took them over to set and all I could see were two animatronic elephants surrounded by the film crew. We got closer, and we couldn’t see Sacha anywhere. Then suddenly my husband popped his head out of the elephant’s vagina and proceeded to fight against the other elephant’s erect penis. I saw my stepmum’s face - and my mouth was just opening and closing like a goldfish, but no words came out.”
She also said their evening catch-ups about their day are far from normal, recalling the time he once came home drenched in blood as the result of an apparent scene with a six-foot-four dominatrix.
“Once, Sacha came back from work while he was shooting Bruno and he had red welts and blood all over his back, and his thumb was broken. It was the result of a scene with a real six-foot-four dominatrix who had tried to force him to have sex with her. When I asked him what had happened, he just said it was a ‘workplace injury’.”
One of Baron Cohen’s most controversial roles was Borat which saw him cause a ripple of anger across an entire country and the film banned in several others. The Australian native says during that time their conversation topics often ventured towards any potential legal issues rather than mundane, household chores.
“Instead of asking: ‘Are you going to pick up the dry cleaning?’ I’d ask, ‘Are we getting sued by somebody?’ or ‘Is there a warrant out for your arrest?’,” she said. “But luckily when he started to make fictional films like The Dictator, we didn’t have to have those kinds of conversations, because there were no legal implications’
The couple has three children together. The Great Gatsby actress said it was not uncommon for her husband to come home in character and confuse the children.
To read the full interview and subscribe to the magazine, head to squaremile.com.
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