Sacha Baron Cohen spent 11 hours prepping to confront THIS American political figure

Actor Sacha Baron Cohen’s 2006 film Borat turned the entire genre of comedy upside-down and the 2020 sequel Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm ended up taking it to a whole new level. Now, as the film’s two stars and writers have been nominated for Oscars, the entire team spoke about the inspiration of the Subsequent film in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. The lead actor Sacha Baron Cohen explained how important it became for them to release the film prior to the November elections.

Along with it, he also revealed that it was difficult to shoot the ending of the film which involved pranking a prominent political leader. During the interaction, Cohen said that the first movie, along with touching comedy also exposed a dark underbelly of the American society filled with ‘racism, misogyny and anti-Semitism’. However, as per the actor, under Donald Trump’s reign, the underbelly became ‘overt’.

The actor enunciated that all the racists 'became proud' and Cohen did not want to witness it all and just be a bystander. Cohen said that they felt the need to do something as the elections were coming up. He reportedly did not want to further see the deterioration of democracy in America. Hence, the actors and writers felt that they could bring back their successful character, Borat again as a Trump supporter to show how far real Trump supporters would join the president’s dismantling of democracy, Cohen added.

A scene from the sequel film showcased how Cohen dresses up as Donald Trump to confront Vice President Mike Pence at the Conservative Political Action Conference. As detailed by the actor, it took them 11 hours to prep for the sequence. It involved Cohen getting up at 1 in the morning, driving to a motel, having the prosthetics team do their work and turn him into Donald Trump.

They reportedly smuggled into CPAC, getting past various layers of Secret Service and ended up hiding in a bathroom for four hours. Eventually, when Mike Pence came on, the actor had one chance to do his scene before he ended up being surrounded by the Secret Service. The actor added he had to avoid being arrested and get thrown in jail.

(Promo Image Source: Still from Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm)