Sacha Baron Cohen says he is officially retiring Borat Sagdiyev. In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, the comedian revealed that there will not be another "Borat" film because things "got too dangerous."
"There were a couple of times I had to put on a bulletproof vest to go and shoot a scene, and you don't want to do that too many times in your life," he said. "I was pretty lucky to get out this time, so no, I'm not doing it again. I'm going to stay with the scripted stuff."
Cohen debuted Borat's character, a chauvinistic Kazakh journalist, in 2006. In 2020 he revived the character for the sequel, "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm." The film contained several volatile scenes but it was the scene in which he attended a March for Our Rights rally that kept Cohen awake at night.
"The night before something like that — that rally — you're trying to go through everything that can go wrong," he said. "In a normal scene like what we're doing, we're trying to make sure, 'How do I make sure my performance is real? Have I done my research? How do I make sure the accent's perfect?' In this one you're going, 'OK, if a bunch of guys with guns come from that side of the stage, have I got a way to get out? What happens if someone shoots me? What if a bunch of people start shooting me?'"
In addition to wearing a bulletproof vest, Cohen's production team built a bulletproof amplifier to keep him safe if shots were fired.
"The idea was the bulletproof vest would be able to take a couple of bullets, but if a bunch of people started shooting, I would jump behind this kind of big speaker," he recalled. "I don't want to do it again. I got away with it. I'm not pushing my luck again."
In 2019, Cohen promised he would be retiring Borat but in a January interview with Variety explained that he had "brought Borat out because of [former President Donald] Trump."
There was a purpose to this movie, he said, adding that he did not "see the purpose to doing it again" a third time around.
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.