No movie in 2020 provided a deeper — or more hilarious — look at the bizarre state of modern conservatism than Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm”, which made headlines for one particular scene involving the man once called “America’s Mayor,” but is now better known as Trump’s lawyer.
In that scene, Rudy Giuliani is having a flirty post-interview conversation with actress Maria Bakalova, playing the 15-year-old daughter of Cohen’s Borat, when he’s captured on hidden camera lying back on a hotel room bed and thrusting his hand down the waistband of his pants.
Giuliani denied he’d done anything inappropriate, and accused Cohen of a “hit job,” blasting the scene as “a complete fabrication.”
According to Cohen, the team of then-candidate (and eventual president) Joe Biden were “very happy” by the turn of events involving Giuliani, who’d been making headlines on his own for holding a press conference at a landscaping company adjacent to an adult bookstore and a crematorium, and another in which brown goo oozed down his face.
The footage in “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm”, Cohen said in an interview with the Guardian, added to the damage Giuliani had already inflicted upon himself while he was in the midst of desperately contesting the election results and trying to drum up a scandal surrounding Biden’s son.
“Suddenly he was having to try to explain that he wasn’t playing with himself. It was such a close election that everything in those final weeks was crucial,” Cohen explained.
At the time, Cohen responded to Giuliani’s attempted explanations of his behaviour, both as himself and in character as Borat.
“I would say that if the president’s lawyer found what he did there appropriate behavior then heaven knows what he’s doing with other female journalists in hotel rooms.”@SachaBaronCohen weighs in on the Rudy Giuliani scene in #Borat2 that has made headlines. pic.twitter.com/RfeNJeWPdw
— Good Morning America (@GMA) October 23, 2020
OFFICIAL STATEMENT FROM BORAT SAGDIYEV pic.twitter.com/vM92Lam5vV
— Borat (@BoratSagdiyev) October 23, 2020
After it was announced that “Borat 2” and “The Trial of the Chicago 7” (in which Cohen played activist Abbie Hoffman) both received Golden Globe nominations, Cohen took another shot at Giuliani.
In a statement to IndieWire, he admitted he was “overwhelmed and humbled” by the nominations. “Thank you to the HFPA for this ridiculous amount of nominations. I’m so honoured — and in the event that we don’t win, I promise to hire Rudy Giuliani to contest the results.”
