If you have been eager to get as much information as possible about the upcoming Borat sequel before its debut on Amazon on October 23, Sacha Baron Cohen‘s recent conversation with Maureen Dowd in The New York Times is (deep breath) Very Nice!!!!
While much of Dowd’s conversation is devoted to Cohen’s recent turn as Abbie Hoffman in Aaron Sorkin‘s The Trial of the Chicago 7, it is quickly evident that the Times columnist has had eyes on the long-awaited follow-up to Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, the shot-in-secret Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Jagshemash!
In addition to what has been seen in the trailer, we now know a few more things. For starters, Borat Sagdiyev, returned to U.S. and A., uses the flower bed outside the Trump International Hotel in Manhattan as a rest room. He will also apparently run down a busy street in lacy pink lingerie. And, when he goes to purchase a cake, he will ask the baker to inscribe “Jews will not replace us” (plus a smiley face) in icing.
Dowd also confirms what was suspected, that his appearance at a right-wing rally (singing “inject them with the Wuhan Flu” and “chop ’em up like the Saudis do”) was part of the film.
Much of the story will involve Borat’s daughter, who is kept in a cage (“nicer than Melania’s cage?”) and, Dowd lets slip, is brought to a department store looking for the “No means Yes section.”
As seen in the trailer (and, back in February, on unknowing news outlets), Borat will try to present his daughter as a gift to Mike Pence, mispronounced in the most immature manner possible. To do so Cohen had to wear a 56-inch fat suit and wait it out at the most ignoble spot at CPAC.
“I ended up hiding in the bathroom, listening to conservative men go to the toilet for five hours until I broke into the room. We were surrounded by Secret Service and police and internal security,” Cohen said.
Cohen also detailed what it was like to live in lockdown for days, in character, with Internet-fueled conspiracy nuts. “I was waking up, having breakfast, lunch, dinner, going to sleep as Borat when I lived in a house with these two conspiracy theorists. You can’t have a moment out of character.”
Dowd’s conversation also gets into the actor’s marriage to Isla Fisher, his previous run-ins with Donald Trump, and, perhaps most striking, the news that Cohen’s favorite Adam Sandler film is You Don’t Mess With The Zohan, and that he “tried to get that movie, to rewrite it, to appear in it.”
Team-up Zohan sequel when?!?!?
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