Sacha Baron Cohen Decided to Revive Borat After Donald Trump Got Elected

2020 has filled out a lot of deeply strange spaces on that proverbial bingo card, but few outside of Sacha Baron Cohen‘s immediate orbit could have expected a new Borat movie a full 14 years after the original. According to a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, Cohen said that he revived the famous fictional Kazakhstani well before anyone had heard of the Subsequent Moviefilm. The decision to bring back Borat was tied directly to the election of Donald Trump.

“When Donald Trump got elected president, I felt it was time to go undercover again. Borat is effective because he is essentially 20 percent more extreme than Trump. He’s 20 percent more misogynistic. He’s 20 percent more supportive of white supremacists and 20 percent more enthusiastic about caging children,” Cohen said, while talking with the publication for their “Entertainers of the Year” issue.

While he doesn’t think the heavily streamed sequel held enough sway to change the outcome of the presidential election, Cohen does admit that catching Rudy Giuliani with his pants halfway unbuttoned might have taken some of the bite from one of the president’s favorite attack dogs. 

“What I believe it may have done was to reduce the impact of the Republicans’ October surprise that was being delivered by the president’s lawyer. Remember, the movie was released on Amazon prior to the final presidential debate. And the image of Rudy Giuliani on the bed with his hand down his trousers was circulating the day before that,” he said. “So did it slightly dampen the impact of his October surprise? I hope so. I would say comedy and satire humbled the powerful. That’s what I tried to do in Borat.”