Next month could be pretty significant for Sacha Baron Cohen. On October 16, Netflix will release The Trial of Chicago 7, Aaron Sorkin’s long-gestating film about the 1969 legal proceeding. It stars as Abbie Hoffman in a performance that’s already garnered Cohen strong reviews and received nascent Oscar buzz. But that film might not even be Cohen’s biggest contribution to the discourse over the next four weeks. That’s because the comedian also appears to have his own October surprise in store: a sequel to Borat that was filmed in secret. It allegedly interrogates the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic as well as President Donald Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, and could be released before Election Day.
That, at least, is what separate reports from film websites Collider and The Film Stage revealed earlier this month, as both sites reported on apparent test screenings of the project. But Cohen has been leaving his own trail of breadcrumbs for weeks. In June, a disguised Cohen crashed a far-right rally in Washington State and performed a savage parody song critical of Dr. Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, and other “mask-wearers” who have preached scientific fact during the coronavirus pandemic.
In July, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani called the police on Cohen, again wearing a disguise, after he surprised Giuliani in a spoof interview. “This guy comes running in, wearing a crazy, what I would say was a pink transgender outfit,” Giuliani told the New York Post. “It was a pink bikini, with lace, underneath a translucent mesh top, it looked absurd. He had the beard, bare legs, and wasn’t what I would call distractingly attractive.”
After he called the police, Giuliani alleged, Cohen ran off. “I only later realized it must have been Sacha Baron Cohen. I thought about all the people he previously fooled and I felt good about myself because he didn’t get me,” Giuliani said. At the time, a representative for Cohen did not comment on the Giuliani interview; Vanity Fair has reached out to Cohen’s reps about Borat 2 and has not yet heard back.
In August, a video emerged of Cohen, dressed as Borat, driving through the streets of Los Angeles.
Over the weekend, a potential title was revealed via a now-deleted page on the Writers Guild of America website: Borat: Gift of Pornographic Monkey to Vice Premier Mikhael Pence to Make Benefit Recently Diminished Nation of Kazakhstan.