There’s an apocryphal quote attributed to the late, great George Carlin: “It’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.”
If that’s true, few have crossed it more frequently—or more fearlessly—than Sacha Baron Cohen. Very few, also, have had the global impact in feature comedy that he has had.
Over the last three decades, Cohen has permeated global pop culture with a range of original characters. In particular, Ali G, his faux-streetwise cultural appropriator from Staines-upon-Thames, and Borat, his blundering Kazakh journalist, have helped drive cultural conversation, even as the work has provoked backlash in equal measure to laughter.
Inclined until recently to let his characters speak for themselves, Cohen has generally taken the public’s response in stride, committed to the goal of helping to “make a slightly more tolerant society” through satire. A master of disguise, whose disruptive influence on comedy dates back to ’90s London, his M.O. has been to send meticulously crafted, memorably buffoonish characters careening through the real world. The goal? To expose the assumptions, prejudices and absurdities of those interacting with them in the real world — whether on the right or left, in a position of tremendous power or someone off the street.
The work that goes into these films, and the stakes behind them are immense; repeatedly, across projects, Cohen has put his life on the line for the sake of a joke. Naturally, then, he’s spoken on more than one occasion about retiring from his work in undercover comedy. He makes the claim, once again, while discussing his latest feature, Ali G: Who Iz I? — his first film centered on the character in more than 20 years, and his first as director.
If this is indeed Cohen’s last outing with his experimental form of filmmaking, he’s gone out with a bang. He calls Who Iz I? his “most extreme and ambitious” movie to date — his version of The Avengers, as a film in which he inhabit multiple of his characters. Not just his breakout character, Ali G, but also two of his creations for Showtime series Who Is America?: the obnoxious ultra-liberal Dr. Nira Cain-N’Degeocello, who becomes the Dr. Evil to Ali G’s Austin Powers, as well as the Israeli anti-terrorism expert Erran Morad. (Notably, Cohen even consulted with Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, the screenwriters behind Avengers: Endgame and myriad other MCU projects, in constructing his narrative.)
Released last month, Who Iz I? finds Ali G resurfacing decades after the cancellation of Da Ali G Show when he learns that his girlfriend Julie (Morgana Robinson) is pregnant and he must find a way to support his family. When Nira Cain-N’Degeocello learns of the return of the “white culture appropriator,” he makes it his mission to get him canceled.
The film culminates in a sequence shot continuously over eight hours and 12 locations, involving nearly 200 crew members and hundreds of carefully choreographed beats. To achieve it, Cohen brought in specialists in prosthetics, animatronics and explosives, alongside magicians and world-famous psychologists.
“The end scene is, according to [VFX supervisor] Rob Legato, the most difficult scene ever shot,” Cohen tells me on today’s episode of Comedy Means Business, “and he worked on Titanic.”
On this week’s podcast, Cohen shares the backstory behind his decision to bring Ali G back, before getting into the extreme prep that’s made his films possible. We also discuss his career beginnings, and how his early academic work and lifelong interest in identity have fueled his films from Ali G Indahouse on — works whose intentions can be easily misinterpreted, which have more on their mind than some give them credit for.
Explaining how each of his character comedies has been approached with a different genre in mind — Who Iz I? is a fugitive thriller — Cohen talks pressing through fear on set, navigating the online discourse around his work, and the unsettling recent “move towards the acceptance of political violence” that inspired his latest film. Also: his studies under iconic French clowning guru Philippe Gaulier, who passed away this year; his concerns surrounding AI; mastering sword fighting for his new play The Popinjay Cavalier, marking a long-in-the-works collaboration with Quentin Tarantino; and more.
Check out the full conversation by clicking above.
