On October 23rd, fourteen years after he first plummeted into our collective consciousness, Borat will return. Sacha Baron Cohen has revived his iconic character for a second instalment, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
Ahead of the release of the film, the man behind the madness sat down with the New York Times for an extensive interview, delving into his decision to bring back Borat.
The new film will see Cohen delve into how the Trump administration has allowed racism and hatred to come to the forefront of society.
“In 2005, you needed a character like Borat who was misogynist, racist, anti-Semitic to get people to reveal their inner prejudices,” he said. “Now those inner prejudices are overt. Racists are proud of being racists.’’ When the president is “an overt racist, an overt fascist,’’ he said, “it allows the rest of society to change their dialogue, too.
Cohen revealed that the aim with the second Borat film is not to expose racism (it’s everywhere) but to offer some joy and reflect on the dangers of losing democracy.
“My aim here was not to expose racism and anti-Semitism,” he said. “The aim is to make people laugh, but we reveal the dangerous slide to authoritarianism.”
Throughout his career, Cohen has been notoriously private, rarely giving interviews out of character. The Trump administration has incited a change in Cohen, who is now more outspoken in his political ideology.
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At the 2019 Anti-Defamation League Summit, Cohen delivered a 24-minute sermon that saw him condemn tech giants Facebook, Twitter, Google, and YouTube.
Cohen revealed that he acted out of necessity.
“I felt like I had to ring the alarm bell and say that democracy is in peril this year. I felt, even if it was going to destroy my career and people are going to come at me and say, ‘Just shut up, the last thing we need is another celebrity telling us what to do’ — I fully understand people who do that — I felt I needed to do that to live with myself.”
Check out the trailer for Borat 2:
