Sacha Baron Cohen Rewatches Borat, Talladega Nights, Da Ali G Show & More

So it took these guys a long time

to actually storm the stage.

Eventually they did. [VHS clicking]

One of them pulled a gun

and I was lucky enough to have a security guard

that grabbed the arm of the guy and whispered in his ear,

It's not worth it, buddy.

Which is apparently what you do

when someone's about to shoot you.

This is your normal Vanity Fair behind the scene though.

[producers laughing] [static buzzing]

Hello, my name's Sacha Baron Cohen,

and today I'm gonna be watching some scenes

from my career with Vanity Fair.

[upbeat retro music]

[retro music] [VHS clicks]

[VHS whirring]

[VHS echoing]

My name a Borat Sagdiyev,

I am son of Asimbala Sagdiyev and Boltok the Rapist.

In the movie Borat,

the only person who was in on it was Pamela Anderson.

The first time we shot with her,

she had a dog wedding

between her and another celebrity on the beach in Malibu

and Borat interrupts the dog wedding.

I'm on a raft.

I get pulled in by a jet ski

and I'm playing Keytar singing this song.

♪ You'll be my wife I treat you nice ♪

♪ We'll make love whenever I like ♪

We shot that movie, he interrupts,

she tells him she doesn't know who he is.

He gets bundled.

Again, in a real scene with real people.

And we looked at it and we thought, we can do better.

That last scene isn't good enough for us.

So we went to the studio, we asked for more money.

Amazingly, they gave us some.

We came up with this idea of Borat has this marriage sack

and he's gonna stick it over Pamela Anderson.

That will mean that she is married to him.

Will you marry me?

Uh,

no thanks, I'm sorry. [Borat chuckling dryly]

No, I going with my best sack.

[Pamela shrieking] [onlookers clamoring]

[Pamela] Oh my God!

[Sacha] Pull, pull, pull, pull, pull.

And everyone is real in this, obviously,

apart from myself, Ken Davitian, playing Azamat

and Pamela Anderson, who are all in on it.

Everyone else, they're real fans.

We shot the scene twice in one day.

The first time the fans didn't do anything.

I stick her over my shoulder, no one did anything.

And this time they get involved

and I've got her over my shoulder.

And actually I bumped into Pamela Anderson

on Saturday night at some event.

[VHS clicking] And she said,

I gotta tell you something,

which was, When you span around, I hit my chin

and there's a bit of bone floating around since that day.

[VHS clicking]

She told me one time, she goes,

I'm gonna show the movie to Kid Rock.

And I said, All right, tell me how how it goes.

It was a little private screening in Malibu

with a bunch of Hollywood types.

I said, How'd it go?

And she said, We're getting divorced.

And I went, Ha ha.

She said, No, we're actually getting divorced.

She filed for a divorce the next day

and put reason for divorce,

she wrote, Borat.

[VHS clicking]

No, wait!

Pamela, I'll give you your own plow!

Oh, my God! When we run out,

there were some security guards.

They'd just come back from Iraq

and they were told to just take me down.

They tackle me. And I cut my head open actually.

See, that was the only real time that I got injured.

So in retrospect, me and Pamela both got injured

in that scene. That was a little worse.

[VHS clicking]

Pamela, I am not attracted to you anymore.

Not.

[upbeat retro music]

[VHS clicking]

[VHS whirring]

[VHS echoing]

[rock music] Straight Dave.

Straight Dave. [crowd cheering]

Get 'em, boy! [crowd cheering]

Yes. So, Bruno was a dangerous movie to make.

First time we shot this, my assistant comes in, Lutz,

you know, I say, Does any of you wanna fight? Come on!

And he comes in to fight straight Dave.

And we have a fight. And I stop beating him up.

He's got blood capsules. It looks pretty realistic.

We'd rehearse the fight and the audience start booing.

Why? Because I looked like a tough guy

who knew about Ultimate Fighting.

He looked like a nerd who comes in.

And I beat him up, fair and square,

and I got too into character,

kind of lost sense of what I was meant to be doing, legally.

And I challenged anyone in the audience to fight

and, Come on! Any of you wanna fight, come in up,

kicks the out of you.

I was instructed by my lawyer,

Whatever you do, do not incite a riot.

And I see this huge guy stand up

and he runs towards the cage and like,

This is fine. I'm gonna be protected.

You know, I got security guards.

I go, Wait a minute. Where are the security guards there?

Where are they? Where are they? Where are they?

I see they're right down at the other end of the arena.

A fight had broken out.

This guy jumps, grabs hold of the cage,

does a flip lands in front of me.

He's like a six foot eight, super tough UFC fighter.

And he roars.

And luckily we had built a trap door in this cage.

There was debate as to whether we should,

we built a trap door and I had a bodyguard,

who'd just come back from Afghanistan.

And the code word was, Go, go, go.

And I realized with Larry Charles,

the problem was that it looked like I was too dominant.

And we shoot the same scene another time.

[crowd cheering] [crowd member shouting]

[VHS clicking] This time,

we put fake barbed wire at the top of the cage

because that would psychologically inhibit

people from jumping in.

And also we zip tie all the chairs down.

I redid the scene.

And so what happens was I turn around

and Lutz, attacks me from behind.

He plays dirty.

And so the crowd are on my side,

[VHS clicking] then I fight him,

then I beat him up.

There's blood, pin him back, the crowd are on my side.

Then I kiss him.

[romantic music] [crowd cheering]

♪ This one time and next time ♪

[crowd booing]

[VHS clicking] What I noticed

was when people are homophobic

and they found out my character was gay,

they would often threaten violence

and sometimes become violent.

And so we are making out on the floor,

and suddenly I see one metal chair fly in.

I'm thinking, How the hell did that happen?

Somebody had brought in a knife

and started soaring through the zip ties.

[VHS clicking] And I hear, Go, go, go.

I go, run out.

And we fortified the sides of this trap door

and this tunnel that we'd built.

And you see in the wide, a bunch of the crowd trying

to break into the tunnel.

There's a car with the door open that's running.

We drive and we get out of there.

And we basically wrote this movie as if it was a rom com.

And instead of it being at a ball game, you know

where everyone's cheering when they kiss,

the idea would be to make them rather upset.

[retro upbeat music]

[VHS clicking]

[VHS whirring]

[VHS echoing]

I wrote this song, with my two best buddies?

[crowd applauding]

[country music] Yeah! Very nice!

♪ Obama was a traitor ♪

♪ America he hate her ♪

So, the band in this scene we hired,

they knew what we were gonna do.

And for this scene, actually,

it was one of the two times in Borat Subsequent Movie Film

that I wore a bulletproof vest

[VHS clicking] because this was a gun rally.

A lot of people had semi-automatics.

And so I was advised by my security guard

to wear a bulletproof vest.

I said to him, Well, what happens if they start using

these semi-automatics?

And so he built an amplifier, which you can see

[VHS clicking] on the left

that is basically pretty much bomb proof.

[VHS clicking] And the idea was

if they really started shooting,

I would jump behind the big amplifier

and then security would come and get me.

Take me to a waiting ambulance and get me out of there.

♪ Dr. Fauci what we gonna do ♪

♪ Inject him with the Wuhan flu ♪

♪ Inject him with the Wuhan flu ♪

[VHS clicking] This was in

the middle of Covid.

We were the first movie to go out during Covid to shoot.

So we were, you know, experimenting

with how to stop the virus spreading.

And actually the second day of filming,

half the crew had Covid, despite us taking around,

we had a testing machine

that was like a huge 1980s photocopier,

but they'd forgotten to supply us with two parts.

So it would take three days for a result. So we'd shoot.

And then three days later we realized,

oh, five people had Covid in there.

[Sacha chuckling]

And pretty soon we were just shooting

with regular TV cameramen from the local area.

[VHS clicking] And these people here

didn't believe in Covid.

They believed it was a liberal hoax.

[VHS clicking] And they believed

that it started in China.

And they called it the Wuhan Flu,

which was a phrase that Trump had used.

And the reason I did this scene was I wanted to demonstrate

that these lies and conspiracies ultimately,

would lead to violence.

So this kind of fun country and western song

that's actually written by my brother,

it was all about injecting people with the Wuhan flu.

And it was warning really about that,

saying that lies fed to good people

will actually lead to good people committing heinous acts.

[VHS clicking] Who wants to

chop 'em up like the Saudis do?

[crowd cheering]

♪ Journalists what we gonna do ♪

♪ Chop them up like the Saudi's do ♪

[VHS clicking] There was a member

of Black Lives Matter,

who went undercover into this crowd

because there was a rivalry

between these two groups. [VHS clicking]

And that person recognized me and went,

Oh! Sacha Baron Cohen! It's Borat.

People started storming, or trying to storm the stage.

What they didn't realize was

we had actually paid for the security for the event.

Through a right wing super pack that we'd created.

And so it took these guys a long time

to actually storm the stage.

Eventually they did.

One of them pulled a gun

and I was lucky enough to have a security guard

that grabbed the arm of the guy

and whispered in his ear, It's not worth it, buddy.

Which is apparently what you do

when someone's about to shoot you.

And then I was escorted out,

went into a waiting ambulance,

and the security guard said,

Let's go, go, go, go and shut the door. Let's go.

And I see the director Jason Woliner running

and he's being chased by some of these guys with guns.

And my security guard said,

We can't!

I said, Let's wait for him.

He goes, We can't. Let's go, go, go, go.

And I decided to wait for him.

Jason jumps in, we close the doors and we're surrounded.

And I say to the security guard, I say,

The doors are closed, right? You've locked all the doors?

He goes, Yeah, absolutely.

At that point, one of the doors gets pulled open

and they start trying to pull me out through pure physics.

I grab onto the door

and use my legs to push against their pulling

and managed to close the door,

then chased by a bunch of guys.

I was hiding out in an Airbnb nearby, in Tacoma.

And they found out where I was.

And then really, I was changing venue every night

because these guys who were very connected in the area

were looking for me.

So that was the last kind of week of Borat 2.

It was quite intense.

[retro upbeat music]

[VHS clicking]

[VHS whirring]

[VHS echoing]

[instrumental music] ♪ Welcome Monsieur ♪

♪ Sit yourself down ♪

♪ And meet the best innkeeper in town ♪

♪ As for the rest ♪

♪ All of them crooks rooking the guests ♪

♪ And cooking the books ♪ [VHS clicking]

This is Master of the House from Les Miserable.

I loved this musical from when I was a kid.

I saw it in the West End in London.

And Tom Hooper asked me to do this movie.

I couldn't because I was shooting The Dictator at the time.

[VHS clicking] So I said,

The only way I'll do it

is if you do it right at the end of the shoot.

And he says, All right, you've got this big scene,

Master of the House.

It's a really complicated scene.

And he said,

Listen, would you choreograph it while I'm filming?

And at the end of every day, show me what you've got.

So I kind of worked as a kind of assistant for him.

And you know, he'd shoot, I'd show him what we had.

It was a really complicated scene

of how we steal stuff [VHS clicking]

and we had to actually affect the set

and where stuff would go into.

And then we kind of worked together.

He was completely into collaboration.

I'm better if I collaborate, if I surround myself

with great people who are a lot smarter than me,

they'll think of great ideas, they'll come up with stuff.

And it's that creative process.

I'm not a auteur. [VHS clicking]

I'm not a solo guy who sits in a room.

I'm someone I need to vibe off people.

[VHS clicking] ♪ Master of the house ♪

♪ Keeper of the zoo ♪

♪ Ready to relieve them of a sou or two ♪

♪ Water in the wine ♪

♪ Making up the weight ♪

♪ Picking up their nik-naks when they can't see straight ♪

[VHS clicking] It got to a week

before this scene and

because Tom Hooper insisted on everyone singing live.

You know, most musicals are prerecorded.

This one was sung live.

And I'd done that once before on Sweeney Todd,

where I sang a few takes live and then used it.

I told Tom Hooper that and he was like,

Let's do that for the whole movie.

We were singing ten hours a day and I lost my voice.

So I went on voice rest.

That means you don't speak for a week, anything.

You don't even whisper.

This was the first time I opened my mouth

and the first time I'm singing

and my voice is really croaky and I kind of hate it.

And I said to Tom Hooper, I go,

I'll record it today,

but obviously we're gonna redo my voice.

Unfortunately, he used the croaky, husky voice,

I suppose it gives me this kind of criminal feel to it.

[VHS clicking] ♪ Everybody raise a glass ♪

[crowd cheering]

♪ Raise it up the masters arse ♪

[crowd exclaiming]

♪ Everybody raise a glass to the master of the house ♪

[retro upbeat music]

[VHS clicking]

[VHS whirring]

[VHS echoing]

You have set me free and for that I thank you.

[crowd cheering in the background]

I will never shake your hand, ever.

But I will give you this.

[crowd cheering intensifying]

[upbeat music]

[VHS clicking] So this is

an interesting scene.

This kiss here was actually an idea that I had.

I went up to Adam [VHS clicking]

and I said,

Listen, I've got this idea

that they kiss at the end,

and then I say, Sir, you Taste of America.

[VHS clicking] And he said, I dunno.

And I go, Please, I think, can we try it?

He goes, All right, we'll try it. We'll give one.

So we did it. Adam loved it.

The crowd actually booed at the time.

'Cause we had, I think we actually shot it in Talladega

and they were like, What the heck? Boo!

You know, which actually just egged me onto it longer.

Adam McKay always says,

This is why it's always worth shooting an alt,

an alternative to a scene.

I was so happy that this got in.

Sir, you taste of America.

♪ For worse or for better ♪

Thank you. [VHS clicking]

And just a little thing,

that voice that I'm doing,

it's based on my old clown teacher,

Philippe Gaulier, who speaks like this.

You are on the chair of the bad student.

You are not funny. You sit on the chair of the bad student.

I was like, I need an accent for this guy.

And I used Philippe's.

So Philippe, oh, that was yours.

[retro upbeat music]

[VHS clicking]

[VHS whirring]

[VHS echoing]

[dramatic music]

[glasses clattering]

[papers shuffling]

[Catherine gasping] Oh, God.

[VHS clicking]

And this scene here was a 14 page scene, which is a lot,

particularly for someone like me,

who hasn't done that many scripted movies.

[VHS clicking] And Alfonso Koran,

the incredible director who's done Gravity to Mama Tambien,

and one of the better Harry Potters,

[VHS clicking]

he said,

You know, I want this to be shot in one.

In other words, no cuts. You can't stumble.

And so I was a little bit intimidated.

I said, Do we really need, can't we cut around?

And he said, No, cutting.

I can't do the accent,

Cutting is an act of violence.

We basically shot this scene in one go each time,

14 minutes again and again and again

after about 11 takes of it.

That's 11 14's, I dunno what, 154,

two and a half hours of performance.

He says, Today was a rehearsal. Tomorrow we do the scene.

So, it was exhausting.

'Cause you're seeing this.

I'm crying, I'm shouting,

and now I'm looking at it and there are edits.

So Alfonso, what was this bullshit about,

not editing and it being an act of violence?

Should have told me, I would've done the scene

in one and a half minutes sections.

Anyway, I'll carry on watching.

[VHS clicking] Who else has them?

[Catherine] I don't know.

You don't know?

These could soon be all over the internet.

Sit down.

[chair thudding]

Look at them.

Who, who gave you those? Look at them.

[VHS clicking] For me,

with all the characters,

it always comes from the language.

What words do they use? What do they say?

What ideas does that indicate about the character?

What's their rhythm?

And then you go into the performance, you know,

what's the accent?

What is the pitch of the voice?

What's the rhythmical style?

Then it's the costume. What do they wear?

How do they walk? Are they authentic?

You know, how do they change?

With Robert, when I first read it,

I didn't really understand him.

I didn't understand why he went on this journey.

So I said to Alfonso, Let's work on the character

because I can't play him at the moment.

Together, we went back and forth a lot with the language.

And so I started having a lot of dinners with, you know,

upper class guys.

There were people I went to university with who I'd say,

who were upper class, yeah.

I said, Can you organize a dinner

with a bunch of posh twats?

And then I'll observe them.

But you know, get to the dinner.

And the guys would say,

Okay, so we're the posh twats,

what do you wanna know about us?

And yeah, that was at the beginning of the process

of trying to find out who he was.

[retro upbeat music]

[VHS clicking]

[VHS whirring]

[VHS echoing]

What is the most popular thing in the world?

Music.

No.

Tell me.

Ice cream. [VHS clicking]

This was shot before Donald Trump was president,

long before Donald Trump was president.

I always wanted to interview him.

We go into Trump Towers

and I'm waiting in a room with the director,

who you hear off camera, a guy called James Bobin.

And I can hear Trump screaming at the mayor.

We hear him shouting at Giuliani

in the other room on the phone.

And it was kind of intimidating.

And actually having read up about Trump,

I think he often would do that.

I dunno if Giuliani was ever actually on the phone.

But he came in, you know, he's an impressive guy

and it's intimidating.

And I knew I didn't have long.

[VHS clicking] He had said to this director,

James Bobin, who's like this good looking blonde,

[VHS clicking] seemingly upper class guy,

he said, You know, are you interviewing me?

And he said, No, this guy is.

He looks at me, Ali G in the corner,

and I can see Trump's face.

He does not wanna be interviewed by Ali G at all.

And so he goes, All right, let's get this over with.

[VHS clicking]

So me idea is what?

To make a drip proof ice cream.

No.

Oh, that's a fucking brilliant idea, this.

And so this didn't last long.

It was really about me trying to get funding

for this business scheme for an ice cream glove.

He was pretty upset after it.

Trump came out and criticized me

a number of times after that,

and we actually used clips of it to publicize

and promote another TV show I did called Who Is America?

And we used some of his clips talking about me

and how talentless I am.

And yeah, I had no idea

that he was gonna become president of America.

Okay. Is you in or is you in?

Okay, well it sounds like a good idea

and I hope you make a lot of money.

Good luck folks. [Sacha chuckling]

It's been nice seeing you.

You take care of yourself. Okay?

Is you gonna be in on that?

This is fun. [retro upbeat music]

I'm laughing at some of this stuff.

I haven't seen a lot of this stuff since it came out.

[VHS clicking]

[retro upbeat music]

[VHS whirring]

[VHS clicking]

Thank you very much for watching.

[screen buzzing off]

[text gleaming]