Sacha Baron Cohen encountered a number of challenges while filming the sequel to Borat, set for Amazon October 23rd. He spoke with The New York Times about the experience.
IMPERSONATION
At one point, Cohen said he snuck into a Mike Pence speech by dressing as President Donald Trump. “Bear in mind, I spent five hours in makeup that morning with the prosthetic team changing my face into Trump’s face,” he noted.
“This fat suit is huge,” Cohen continued. “It’s a 56-inch fat suit to turn my waist into Trump’s because we had estimated that was the most realistic.”
Cohen added: “Then I ended up hiding in the bathroom, listening to conservative men go to the toilet for five hours until I broke into the room. We were surrounded by Secret Service and police and internal security.”
HARDEST THING
Cohen said: “The hardest thing I had to do was, I lived in character for five days in this lockdown house.”
“I was waking up, having breakfast, lunch, dinner, going to sleep as Borat when I lived in a house with two conspiracy theorists,” he continued. “You can’t have a moment out of character.”
RACISM
Asked about the difference between making the first and second film, he said: “In 2005, you needed a character like Borat who was misogynist, racist, anti-Semitic to get people to reveal their inner prejudices.
“Now those inner prejudices are overt. Racists are proud of being racists,” he added, saying that Trump was “an overt racist, an overt fascist” who “allows the rest of society to change their dialogue, too”.