Stopping Trump, reforming Facebook and risking his life to make a Borat sequel. The actor unveils his plans for a revolution and reveals how it feels to come out as himself
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 saw a guy heading towards him with a pistol, and I realised Sacha didnt know. You could see Sacha thinking, Did I nail that last verse? Hes obsessive about getting a good take. Thats why he might have hung on a little bit too long
I was watching on a monitor in a bulletproof vest, says Peter Baynham, one of the films writers. I saw a guy heading towards him with a pistol, and I realised Sacha didnt 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? Hes obsessive about getting as good a take as possible. Thats why he might have hung on a little bit too long.
Baron Cohen then legged it hes 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 Cohens 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 Februarys Conservative Political Action Conference, in the United States, security captured and interrogated a mysterious Donald Trump impersonator who had interrupted Mike Pences 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 Ive 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 wouldnt do individually.
Sacha Baron Cohen. Photograph: Buck Ellison/NYT
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. Hes having a croissant. On this side of the Atlantic Im ready for bed. He wont say where he is, for security reasons.
Ive 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 youre protesting against racism youre 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 hes 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.
Sacha Baron Cohen and Isla Fisher at the Vanity Fair an Oscars party in 2016. Photograph: Emily Berl/NYT
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? Theyre going to see through me. It was bloody terrifying.
The previous morning the films director, Jason Woliner, realised that although the pair hadnt 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. Borats clothes were never laundered. All washing was prohibited. He always smelled terrible. And we concocted a spray to heighten it.
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? I cant remember whether I flushed
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 cant remember whether I flushed.
For Baynham, monitoring the log-cabin shoot was like watching a very strange experiment. Ive worked with Sacha for 16 years, but I still get taken in by Borat. Sometimes youd 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 hed find a way, in Borats voice, to tell the crew we needed to get a wide-angle shot or that the camera was too high.
The assumption was that Borats retirement could not be reversed. Had the success of his first outing and 2009s Brüno not made future dupes impossible? For a decade Baron Cohen hadnt tried. Instead he acted in an Oscar-winning Martin Scorsese movie (Hugo), two musicals (Sweeney Todd and Les Misérables), a couple of Will Ferrell films, three Madagascar animations and one TV drama about an Israeli agent (The Spy).
He also wrote and starred in a couple of scripted comedies: The Dictator (2012), which was well-received, and Grimsby (2015), which wasnt. Critics sniffed. Baron Cohen was accused of punching-down. Audiences steered clear.
Sacha Baron Cohen as Brüno
Any flop is difficult, says Baron Cohen. But, in retrospect, the experience was fantastic. I was on the trajectory of a comedy movie star in Hollywood, where you make a certain amount of movies that have to do well at the box office. The great thing about having a complete bomb was being liberated from that.
He grins, bright incisors not completely uniform, the better to blend into places other than Hollywood. He wears a white shirt and has very speaking eyebrows: thick black circumflexes that add considerable dash. He looks very scrubbed; cleaner-cut than you might expect.
He is also, on Zoom, immediately likable. His voice is pure north London sark, but he speaks with a fluency and directness that mean you swallow statements you know cant be quite true. He discloses just enough even in this conversation, Catherine, Im trying not to slip up to counter the smoothness.
He answers most questions but abruptly ducks a couple. Redmayne speaks, fondly, of a sensitivity and neurosis that do sometimes seem to pop up. But warmth wins. The overall impression is of a chess champion who spends quite a lot of time with London cabbies.
The moment the US issued the Muslim ban I was so repulsed I thought I had to do something. So I went back to creating characters, with the aim of infiltrating Trumps inner circle
Anyway, as he says, everyone hated Grimsby, which was great because any plans for blockbuster domination were scrapped. And at the same time Donald Trump came to power. The moment they issued the Muslim ban I was so repulsed I thought I had to do something. So I went back to creating characters, with the aim of infiltrating Trumps inner circle. This led, in 2018, to Who Is America?, an extraordinary TV series in which a host of new stooge interviewers bag dozens of Republican scalps.
Among them was Dick Cheney, the former US vice-president, who signed a waterboard, countless politicians who endorsed a Kinderguardian programme to arm toddlers in schools, and the Republican senator Jason Spencer, who required little persuasion to repeatedly yell the N-word, do a lively impression of a Chinese tourist, drop his underpants and upskirt a woman in a burka.
Spencer quit. But the bigger threat remained indeed, Baron Cohen was only getting more dangerous. Trump was really just following step by step the classic authoritarian arc of how to transform a democracy into an autocracy, says Baron Cohen. He was completely following the path.