The actor behind controversial spoof reporter Borat has killed him off, he said in an interview with Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper published on its website.
Cohen plans to stop playing the spoof reporter’s role
LONDON: The actor behind controversial spoof reporter Borat has killed him off, he said in an interview with Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper published on its website.
Sacha Baron Cohen said that Borat, the outrageous, blundering character from Kazakhstan who earned him a Golden Globe award last year, had made his last screen appearance.
He is also killing off his second most famous character, youth presenter Ali G, who like Borat often excels at eliciting indiscreet comments from interviewees thanks to his apparently guileless interviewing style.
“When I was being Ali G and Borat, I was in character sometimes 14 hours a day and I came to love them, so admitting I am never going to play them again is quite a sad thing,” he told the paper. “It is like saying goodbye to a loved one.
“It is hard, and the problem with success, although it’s fantastic, is that every new person who sees the Borat movie is one less person I “get” with Borat again, so it’s a kind of self-defeating form, really.”
Regarding his portrayal as the anti-Semitic Borat, Baron Cohen says the segments are a “dramatic demonstration of how racism feeds on dumb conformity, as much as rabid bigotry,” rather than a display of racism by Baron Cohen himself.
The 2006 smash hit film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan offended some in the central Asian nation by portraying it as full of backward racists who drink horse urine.
The country’s government was initially angered by the film, which saw the character travel through the United States in search of cultural enlightenment, but its response seemed to soften amid the publicity it brought to Kazakhstan.
The makers of the movie are also facing threats of legal action from several people who say they were tricked into appearing in the mock documentary.
“Since last year I’ve been sued by about 3,000 people,” Baron Cohen told the Telegraph. “Some of the letters I get are quite unusual, like the one where the lawyer informed me I’m about to be sued for $1,00,000 and at the end says, “P.S. Loved the movie. Can you sign a poster for my son Jeremy?’”
When Sacha Baron Cohen speaks Kazakh it is mostly Hebrew disguised by a heavy fake Eastern European accent. The Hebrew is quite understandable and contains many in-jokes. Sacha Baron Cohen admitted this in a rare “out of character” radio interview on National Public Radio in the United States.
Baron Cohen has encountered several controversies regarding some of his comic characters. Baron Cohen has had some troubles because of racist or prejudiced comments his characters have made in Da Ali G Show.”Cohen’s next project features Bruno, an effeminate Austrian fashion reporter.
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