Sacha Baron Cohen on Trump, Gross-Out Gags and His Shocking New Comedy
If Donald Trump didn’t exist, Sacha Baron Cohen would have had to invent him. Not since the halcyon days of Borat and Brüno has anyone so effectively goaded Americans into revealing the anger and ignorance that burbles just beneath the surface. The frighteningly popular presidential candidate leading a rally in one of his signature call-and-response moments (“And who’s gonna pay for the wall?” “Mexico!”) would rank with the British actor/prankster’s greatest stunts if only Trump were in on the joke.
Compared to what passes for politics these days, the characters that branded Cohen as the Peter Sellers of his generation almost seem unnecessary. Which may be part of the reason why the relentlessly transgressive Englishman has moved away from the immersive guerrilla comedy he pioneered with Da Ali G Show in favor of more traditionally scripted fare — albeit with a film that finds other ways to obliterate the boundaries of good taste. In The Brothers Grimsby, Cohen plays a dimwitted British football hooligan who learns that his long-lost brother is a badass spy. Imagine Ace Ventura directed an NC-17 buddy cop movie co-starring Liam Gallagher and MacGyver, and you’ll have the right idea.
A throwback to the gross-out comedies of yesteryear, Grimsby nevertheless finds Cohen taking aim at the scam artist who stole his shtick, as the film climaxes with an unauthorized Trump cameo for the ages. In a rare interview as himself, Cohen spoke to Rolling Stone about his billionaire punching bag, his place in the world of comedy, and why he misses the days when he would regularly risk his life for a laugh.
You studied the Holocaust in college — has watching Trump’s campaign unfold given you a clearer understanding as to how it happened?
Wow. That’s a pretty powerful question. You know what? I don’t know if I can actually answer that without getting myself in complete trouble, because I’ll be linking the potential future President of the United States with one of the greatest atrocities ever committed. [At the premiere of The Brothers Grimsby the following night, Cohen wore a “Make America Great Again” hat and told the crowd: “A loud, ranting bloke shouting out racial hatred at rallies has never hurt anyone.”]
Don’t worry about it — he’s very tolerant of his critics, especially when they’re immigrants.
Well it’s always great to use the Holocaust when you want people to see a comedy film — bring them in out of guilt! No, a demagogue drudges up some very negative sentiments in society. So that can happen, and has happened throughout history. But I’m speaking as a complete ignoramus. I’m just somebody who makes gags, not a political pundit.
Now that you spend half the year living in the States, do you think that the hate and the ignorance you saw reflected in Borat has intensified in the decade since you made it?
Well, bear in mind that I only interviewed 100 or so people for Borat, so it was a small sample size. But yeah, with that movie you saw this patronizing attitude that people had towards an ignorant foreigner with slightly obnoxious views. Well, very obnoxious views. And yet, nobody actually hated Borat. With Borat, I didn’t have that many occasions when people were trying to kill me, apart from maybe when I sang the national anthem at that rodeo.
The hatred that I really encountered was when I was filming Brüno — the kind that some have towards gay people. I remember being at a gun show in Alabama and a six-year-old kid coming up to me and giving me a note that his parents had written, and it said “You’re going to hell.” So I think there are some good things about how America has changed since then. When we made Brüno, the idea that gay marriage would be legal felt like a dream. That was the first movie from a major studio where the gay lead character doesn’t die at the end of the movie — he doesn’t die from AIDS, he isn’t beaten to death. We actually had a kind of happy ending where he ends up with an adopted kid and married and they sort of live happily ever after.