watch Sacha Baron Cohen talk Borat's Giuliani scene & more on 'Colbert'
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm made its debut on Friday and creator and star Sacha Baron Cohen has been stepping out of character to do a few interviews for it, including an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Monday night.
Of course, the hot topic was the scene with Rudy Giuliani, where the former NYC mayor and current Trump legal counsel agrees to go to the hotel room of a reporter who just interviewed him who turns out to be — in the film’s mockumentary fiction — Borat’s 15-year-old daughter, Tutar (played by 24-year-old actress Maria Bakalova). In the scene, Giuliani asks for her number and then reclines on the bed to “tuck in his shirt” — Giuliani has since said he did nothing inappropriate in the hotel room, but Cohen told Stephen Colbert, “My feeling is, if he sees that as appropriate, then heaven knows what he’s intended to do with other women in hotel rooms with a glass of whisky in his hand.” Cohen had already responded as Borat on Friday night.
Cohen also tells a story about the preparation for that scene, including being hidden in a wardrobe, relying on text messages from the director to tell him to burst out — except his phone only had 3% battery left. “I thought, hold on, we’ve got Rudy Giuliani, we’ve got the president’s lawyer, we’ve got this scene, this is the climax of the movie — and no one thought it might be worth charging the phone? So, I managed to keep it on airplane mode and occasionally check in.”
Cohen also talked about living with two Trump supporters, undercover as Borat, for five days during lockdown, and how the scene where he sang the song at an alt-right militia rally could’ve gone horribly wrong. He also sang the praises of Bakalova who steals many scenes in Borat, saying “If she doesn’t win an Oscar, I don’t know what the Academy’s for.”
Colbert also asked him about his Ali G interview with Donald Trump from the mid-’00s and his role as Abby Hoffman in Aaron Sorkin’s new film The Trial of the Chicago Seven. Watch the Colbert interview below.
