Sacha Baron Cohen
Appearances
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
So I go over to these guys, And I'm basically on my skateboard and I'm playing this early Ali G character. And they thought I was real.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
And after about three minutes, I said, guys, you know, I'm not... You know, I'm not real. This is just, you know, I'm playing along. They were completely freaked out. Right. And then a tourist bus came. I jumped on the tourist bus. I commandeered it. I started rapping. Got off the bus. Went into a bus. Sasha, what year was this maybe? This was, I think, 1995 or 4. Okay.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
Anyway, I basically go into a pub. I start breakdancing. They call the police. I go into some big business. I claim that my dad's upstairs and he's the CEO. They call security. We run back to this live TV show. I run. They put on my normal clothes. And this guy, this legendary guy, who's an editor at Ealing Studios, is editing while I'm on air. This is... This is the days of pneumatics.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
This is, he's like cutting, you know, everything's losing full frame. And he's adding music. And this guy was a kind of legendary guy. Wow. And I'm cutting to this stuff and it's, you know, me with real people. So it was the first time that it was a comic character with real people.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
You're right. I'm not really answering your question at all. This was like the first time I ever did... you know, characters in the real world.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
Well, I think in a way, Ali G was kind of a undermining of the establishment. It was essentially saying, okay, these people that run society... they are completely out of touch with society so much that they will believe that this guy is real, despite him asking the most absurd questions ever.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
I was furious. I was weeping. It's one of the weirdest positions. I was weeping at the Vanity Fair party.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
No, he didn't. No, he had absolutely no idea. Because he took me off camera after we'd finished the interview, back to the other room. And so, you know, I was still in character. He completely believed who I was. And that thing showed me like a painting... of a naked woman. Of his wife. Yes, is that possible? It's of his wife.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
Yeah, and he goes, that is my wife. Yeah. Which you wouldn't do if you thought, and I was like, yo, man, yo, she is, man, I was boned out, yo.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
There we go. You've verified the story. That is fact-checking. We have just fact-checked. There you go. We've established me as a reliable witness.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
Yeah, it's my naked wife. My wife. That's James Lipton. She was beautiful, by the way. She was beautiful. I'll bet. Classically, if we use those kind of ways to categorize women. Sure. What does that even mean?
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
Interrupted. I thought I was waiting for that sliver. You threw me a line. A little early.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
And then there was an awp. Then there was an awp. With the last Borat movie, there was quite a lot of that stuff. And actually, I mean, we did, there was a scene at a gun rally, which got quite hairy.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
Yes, it was. I mean, the people with semi-automatics and automatics in the audience, and it was a militia, unfortunately, that had organized it that then didn't take it very well. And I was singing a song called The Wuhan Flu. That's right. I mean, where does the fearlessness come from, though? Well, I'll tell you the truth.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
With that scene, because we knew that there were going to be, you know, basically it was a gun rally. It was in the middle of COVID. We were the only movie shooting. And so, you know, my security said, listen, you need to have a bulletproof vest on. And so I put on the bulletproof vest and I said, they go, that's fine for pistols.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
And they said, I go, what happens if somebody shoots the, you know, semi-automatic? And, you know, it's not just one person. So they built, so I was singing on stage. So they built an amplifier that was pretty much, So they basically said, you know, if people stop really shooting with the semi-automatics, go behind the amplifier and you'll be safe. Jesus! It's unbelievable.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
And so the thing is, you know, you're in the scene, I'm on stage, And, you know, you have this kind of conflict between, you know, I'm terrified. And then you also have, I need to get the scene. So you want to, so I was doing, you know, the same verse again, because I felt I hadn't got a good take of it.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
People were getting more and more, you know, they realized at some point that it was me on stage. There was somebody actually undercover from Black Lives Matter. had infiltrated this gun rally. Yeah. And basically they recognized me and word spread that it was me. And then people started trying to storm the stage.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
Yeah, he went away so well. He had such a beautiful and reasonable funeral.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
Yes, I mean, on the last movie as well, there were these two guys I spent three days in a house with called Jim and Jerry. And they were... Wait, this is Bruno, right? No, this was Borat 2. Oh, right, right, right, right. You know, they believe that Hillary Clinton drank the blood of children and, you know, COVID was a conspiracy and... and that Hillary had killed kids.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
But they were actually... They were nice people. They were good people. They were just... And so you suddenly realise they're... And they're actually feminists because, well, when I was, you know, when I was being... When Porto was being a misogynist about his daughter, they were like, they took it upon themselves to teach me that it was important to be respectful to your daughter.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
And if she wanted to do her own thing, she should do. So they... They were actually good guys. And you suddenly realized... And it was a surprise, right? Because they had those views. And you want to dismiss these people as being horrific. And then you suddenly realized that actually any good person...
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
if they're fed a set of ideas and set of information that's wrong, can believe conspiracy theories that ultimately lead to horrific stuff. Right. Right?
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
I don't, given the state of the current internet and information laws, basically.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
Well, you know, you're being fed so much stuff that polarizes you. Yeah. You know, if you look at the craziness that is going on in the world, everything has been accelerating since, you know, social media came along. Yeah. So until really, in my opinion, until you actually get laws that
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
You know, get legislation that curbs the power of those social media companies and says, all right, actually, you can't spread lies like this that kill people.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
I mean, these are very big questions, huge, and they kind of vary from country to country. So, you know, in England and Australia and Germany, you know, you have laws about hate speech and about certain types of misinformation. In America, obviously, you have complete free speech, but it's not up to those... Except for yelling fire. Yes. Well, actually, you kind of can at the moment.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
I mean, you know, the internet companies, because they're not regulated because of this thing called Section 230, they can put out... Which is a free speech thing, right? Section 230 isn't really about free speech. It basically says you can't sue them.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
So once you can't sue a company, you know, they have no obligation to, you know, maintain the free speech of the United States in the same way that a restaurant can say, you know what, I'm going to throw you out of the restaurant for saying this or that or, you know. You know, having that KKK hood here.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
So I think the fact, you know, they're saying that they care about free speech, basically because it's fantastic for their business model. It means that they can have every single person in the world can be on Meta, can be on Instagram, can be on X, right? They don't care really about free speech.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
Yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously, it's horrific, but you go, you know, while I'm actually in the room, I'm editing the scene as well. Right. So in my head, I'm going, you know, once they've got the thing, I go, oh, that's great. And now one follow up question, bang, okay, now I'm going to move on to the next bit. You know, because there's obviously no direct to that. Yeah.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
What do you mean? What do you mean, my figure? Stay on that topic. What do you mean?
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
I only did one course. I studied with Philippe Gaulier, the legendary clown teacher.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
At l'école Philippe Gaulier. At a clown school. That was it. I did it. But no, I didn't really train in acting, no.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
How do you... Well, I think... Yeah, I think, you know, we did an experiment after, in 2016. That show, Who's America, came out of me and my collaborator, Ant Hines and Dan Zweimer. We basically said, you know what, let's just create some characters. I'd done a movie. It'd been a complete bomb. And I was like, let's take this opportunity to create some characters. And we decided to go...
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
Every week for the next 10 weeks, we're going to create a character, write it, create a fake prosthetic head for it, and at the end of the week, shoot with a real person, with a character. And I did that for 10 weeks, and there were a variety of crazy characters, some that made it to the show. Six we put in the show. And then I realized, basically...
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
What I was able to do is once I've got the way the character speaks, and once I work out what it looks like, and once I work out what the clothes are, and I've got a couple of phrases, I can just stick in it. So that was... Because that was a couple of weeks in, I was like, oh, this is what I can do is I can... You know, they call it inhabiting a character, but I actually kind of...
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
You know, if I've got 30 seconds or whatever, then I can go in it. There must be something wrong with my brain.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
Yeah, what making it real. I mean, it's funny, sometimes I get... You know, I'll have a director say, you know, I want you to do, you know, a scripted movie. And they'll go, this time you're going to be playing a real person.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
And I go, hold on, the other people I play are real people, which is why I'm with Dick Cheney for three hours. And he doesn't doubt once that he's with a real person. What about Giuliani?
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
What can you say? Can you say anything? Can you talk about Giuliani? Yes, yeah, I can, I think, talk about Giuliani. That was amazing. I mean, essentially, you know, that movie... So we were like, why do we bring Borat back? And actually, I've got to thank Kimmel. where Kim said, we want you on. It was like the midterms.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
And he wanted me to do some sketch where basically I was a kind of Ashton Kutcher type who had been manipulating Kanye West into turning him into a character that was so ridiculous that he would hang out with Donald Trump. And basically I said, I'll do it so long as Kanye will do it. This was years ago. This was 2008. 18, right? And so I called up Kanye and said, will you do this thing?
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
And it would be, you know, he'd already met up with Trump and I said, will you do this sketch where it says, you know, we're planning out, you know, we're going to create this ridiculous character and it's going to end up with you in Trump Tower and it's going to be as if you were playing along. And he said, I love the idea, but, you know, I need the president to agree. And I was like, Trump?
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
I go, don't, no, no, don't ask him. So, I couldn't do, he goes, no, I love him and I want you to, I need to ask him. I go, please do not tell him we're doing this sketch at all. So, I couldn't do that sketch. And then basically, I decided to do Borat. Actually, I spoke to Chris Rock. Is that a name drop? I think so. Sure.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
It's a kind of name drop. Yeah. Here it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a name drop. So, I spoke to Chris Rock, world famous comedian and actor. And he said, why don't you... You know, I was in a rush. Basically, I was going to go on air two days' time. He said, just do Borat going door-to-door. We did Borat door-to-door, got the moustache out of storage.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
And then I realised that basically Borat was just an extreme form of Trump. They had almost identical views... Wal-Mart was kind of 30 to 40% more extreme with everything. I was like, oh, great, we can bring him back for Trump. And then I was like, how do I infiltrate, you know, Trump's world? I go, okay, if he has a daughter who's 15, wouldn't it be great if, you know, Trump had sex with her?
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
And so, you know, originally I was trying to work out how to get this, you know, actress in with Trump. We got her close to him for a while, but it was, you know, we spoke to a lot of ex-secret service guys, and the idea was like, I would kind of jump out of the wall somewhere. We had like all these plans where, you know, Trump would be in a room, I would be inside the wall.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
We would, you know, hollow out a wall, then build it up around me. And then I burst out when he was with her. And an ex-top Secret Service guy looked after the president. And we go, what do you think of this plan? I'm going to be in there. I'll be in there for like five hours. He said, the issue is that the Secret Service have a machine that sees if there's anyone else, anyone in the walls. No.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
And I go, all right. So I go, what's worse comes worse. They find that I'm there. And what, they pull me out? He goes, no, they shoot you dead. I go, why? He goes, because why else would you be in a, why would there be a living person inside a wall unless they were trusting you?
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
So we basically gave up on Trump. Also, you know, We thought at the time that, you know, he was the most protected person in the world. I mean, this was prior to those last unfortunate incidents. But Rudy... But then we found out Rudy was a possibility. A little bit of a softer target. Yeah, but we knew that he was going to be crucial. Yeah. And we kind of researched him.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
We found out what he drank, when he started drinking. Was the answer anything? I'm just asking. There was a particular type of alcohol. But then we heard that he would sweep the room. He had a very senior head of security who would come in and sweep the room. And so we built a kind of fake... inside the wardrobe.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
So a fake back to, there was a wardrobe that if somebody opened it, it would have a fake back to him. Behind that was me. And so the idea was, you know, I'd just stand in there for, you know, an hour and a half and the necessary bit, jump out, if he was close to kissing, you know, the girl playing my daughter. And anyway, basically, we had a crew member who accidentally put me in the wrong room.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
And I said, you know, so I would have to be in position for, you know, for this to happen. Otherwise, you know, there's no way to get into the room because his head of security would come into the room, sweep the room, sweep every room, and then he would sit outside so no one could come in with Rudy and her. And I was in the wrong room.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
And I said, wait a minute, how long till Rudy, you know, goes to the room? And he said, oh, he's on his way there now. And I was like, now? And basically I ran to the room and I literally saw Rudy's leg come around the corner. I ducked into the room, went into the wardrobe, went behind the fake wall, closed it.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
And then I heard the door open off his security, you know, sweep the room that I was in and then come out. So he swept through the room. We did the scene, you know, eventually. Oh, by the way, so I'm in there for an hour and a half. And, you know, the only way I can communicate with the director was through a cell phone. And we thought of everything.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
I pick up the cell phone, I'm in the pitch black, and there's 3%. You know, an hour and a half. I was like, we did everything. We've got hidden cameras. But somebody had not charged the cell phone. So at some point, I had to kind of climb out of it and make eye contact with the brilliant actor Maria, who's playing my daughter. And she's like, really just on the bed.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
And she's like coming out, looking at me, going, what do I do? And... And eventually, I confronted Rudy. He freaks out, goes out the room, and his head of security pushes me into the room. You know, I'm playing Borat, and Borat, you know, is so naive. You know, if he sees a chair, he'll say, what is this machine with four legs? You know?
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
And suddenly the head of security pushed me back into the room going, you're going nowhere. Because I had an escape route. So my security guy was going to take me down the escape route, but the head of security pushes me into the room and goes, you're going nowhere, you're staying right here. And I said, this is a false imprisonment.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
You are standing on my property and you will leave now and unhand me now. And basically he realized that and read the law. Ran down, ran down the fire escape, got into a car, got to the crew hotel, and then essentially my lawyer says, he found out what we did, and he said, okay, you've got to get out the state now. I go, that's ridiculous. Why?
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
They go, Rudy had called something, and I'd met the manager of the hotel a year onwards in D.C., And he said Rudy had done something, I don't know what he'd called in, but he said every single type of law enforcement descended on the hotel, shut down the hotel, they confiscated all the equipment, all the crew was stuck in the hotel rooms. And then my security, I had a policeman that I'd hired
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
He realized that I'd set up Rudy Giuliani. He immediately told Rudy's security where I lived, where I was staying. Jesus Christ. And so my lawyer was like, get the hell out of New York City now. I was like, that seems a little bit over the top. I called up this other security guy I know. I know a lot of security guys. Who runs these kind of detectives, you know, New York and stuff like that.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
And I said, listen, I've been told I have to leave New York State immediately. you know, in the next 20 minutes, because I interviewed someone, and I go, he goes, what did you do? And I go, you know, war likes, you know, lingerie, and da-da-da, politician. I go, he goes, who was it? I go, you know, it was Giuliani. He goes, get the hell out of the hotel now.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
So I start texting everyone who I knew outside of New York, go, hi, how's it going? Haven't seen you for a few years. This was the middle of the pandemic. You know, this is when Manhattan was completely empty. You'd go up Fifth Avenue. There was not a car or a person. I go, how's it going? Any chance I could stay soon? When? 15 minutes.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
And people are like, you know, people are like freaked out, not responding. Eventually, one of them says yes. And basically, I drive to Connecticut. And it was fantastic.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
We got all the footage. And then, yeah, it was interesting. It was interesting.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
I mean, I am... I remember the first film I did was Talladega Nights. Yeah. And it was the first trailer I'd been in. Ricky Bubby. And I went in, Ricky Bubby, and... And basically, I remember seeing that there was a bed in the trailer. And I'd never had a trailer beforehand because we'd always been in the back of a car. I was like, why is there a bed? Somebody's accidentally put a bed in my room.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
They go, no, that's... I go, what am I meant to do with it? Sleep, you know. And so I thought, wow, this is actually an incredible gig. But, you know, when it's the other staff... It is, I mean, it's much less stressful. Yeah. Although, you know, I just did this show with Alfonso Cuaron.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
Well, we had like a 15-minute scene, yeah, with me and Cate Blanchett. They wanted to do it in one take.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
I mean, if it's good and you're working with an incredible director, then, and you're an incredible director, my friend.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
No, you are. Can I just say, let's do the remainder of this about Jason. But yeah, then it is great.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
No, because you're just doing the act. You know, everything else is, how are we going to get into the room? What's the escape route? Who's that person? That person's looking suspicious. This person doesn't quite believe me. My fake ear is falling off my head, you know. And then you're, you know, number eight... in the thing is I'm gonna act this scene.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
Or are you done with that? I think they are... Yeah, I mean, the last one became so extreme. And... It was, you know, after that gun rally thing that I was talking about, I was essentially on the run. I had a militia kind of following me, and I was going from safe house to safe house for about four days. That's the movie. Yeah, exactly.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
By the way, I mean, it's, that was, yeah, it kind of is the movie because, you know, you finish that, that song with that militia, you go, oh, that went really well. And then, you know, the escape itself is tough because we're in an ambulance. We're surrounded by 30 guys trying to pull me out of the ambulance. They pull open the door, you know, I'm struggling.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
Yeah, I mean, no one's really... You know, that's the behind-the-scenes stuff. At some point, there needs to be a behind-the-scenes movie. We shot... We did have... We've got a bunch of footage of the last 25 years, but... Yeah, that... I think it became so crazy in the last one that you realize...
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
You've got to be, there's a certain amount of skill and preparation, but also you've got to be lucky. And at some point, your luck runs out.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
Yes. Well, I think just the danger element meant that... I just didn't really want to do it again. You know, I felt I had to do it for that election. I had to do it. I felt it was like, you know, I was terrified about... Well, let's not come off the gas just yet, okay? Yes.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
And I mean, no one could believe that I hadn't watched it until then. And the embarrassing thing was I was laughing at the jokes that I'm making out. There's not many, but it's quite embarrassing. You're at a premiere watching yourself and you're one of the only people laughing at it. And then I was like really moved by one of my performances. I was like near tit.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
And I realized I'm just a complete narcissist, just looking, just really moved by my own performance.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
I never knew there was a connection between actors in movies and narcissism. No, I had no idea.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
If you don't mind malicious coming to your door. No, are you kidding? What do they look like?
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
I'm awful at it. The honest truth is I'm very bad at it. It's terrible to me. Even though I'll see you socially. Socially, it's a pleasure, but the slight pressure with the... No pressure. No, this is great.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
By the way, very muscly. I can see your... I don't know if you're doing this intentionally, but I've seen glutes. Oh, no, he's got everything. No, you've been working out. You're looking very muscly. Put your arms down. Are you doing this for a reason?
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
I love you. No, seriously, I love you both. Sean, you seem very lovely.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
Miss you, Sasha. Always a pleasure. These two, I do love. I do love. We're trash compared to him.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
I feel affectionate. I feel an instant warmth. Oh, he's a little love thing. Yeah, yeah. Very charming and lovely persona.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
You're not going to sue me for saying that, are you? Okay. K. Monty Strong on our podcast. Loved it.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
I personally thought it was excellent. By the way, I have seen stuff that I've done. I was like, that is bad. I laughed and I cried at myself.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
All of them. Cate Blanchett. Cate Blanchett. A guaranteed Emmy tour de force. Cate Blanchett. End of quote. Kevin Kline. I am in this.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
All right. Enjoy the rest of your night. All right. Thank you. See you soon. Love to everyone. Okay, toodaloo. Thank you. Bye.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
Come, come. Please. It's an honor. It's an honor to be 114th? Yes. You're deep. You should have been on earlier. Yeah.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
Have we never met? That seems bizarre. I'm sorry. Lovely to meet you. Lovely to meet you, too.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
You know what? I actually considered, I looked into it very thoroughly, jokes aside.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
During the pandemic, yeah, during the pandemic, we knew we were going to move, but we were looking somewhere in the southern hemisphere.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
I think at that point, it was somewhere in the southern hemisphere, and so we had missed the virus. We were advised by someone at Johns Hopkins, who I happen to know. And so we looked into French Polynesia. I looked carefully into Tahiti. It was interesting. Yeah. There's a bilingual school.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
I have been to Marea. And I've been to, I've not been to the Brando. And I have been to Bora Bora. Where's the Brando? And I can tell you everywhere else that I've visited as well.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
Yes. By the way, I am happy to discuss French Polynesia. At length. Till the end, yes. Actually, I was in a shark attack there once. You were? A feeding frenzy. You were in one? In Morea.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
In those days, I think it's illegal now, they used to do something called shark feeding, where I was doing my paddy license and then...
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
And then, yeah, the guy I was with, some French instructor, basically said, we're going to feed some sharks. And then he puts on a kind of chain mail hand thing. Obviously, we're underwater. And he just said, be near me. And it was just me and him. And he basically breaks open a sardine, I remember it. And then I remember seeing the droplets of blood.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
And then within literally two minutes, there were 12 sharks around. No way. And then he pulls out this bag, this tuna head. And he's got, you know, a chainmail hand on, chainmail kind of glove on. And they start, you know, eating the thing. And it's really interesting. And I'm there opposite. Then they get carried away.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
He's not looking at me. His glove gets knocked off and his regulator gets knocked out of his mouth. And then he leaves.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
He goes up and leaves me alone with the 12 shocks. And I can't see a thing.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
That did not happen when the sharks knocked the regulator out of his mouth and knocked the gloves off and he swam away.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
I was, and I basically started hyperventilating. I mean, this was my second time diving in my life. Yeah, but I mean like... And then actually the guy, he put his regulator back on.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
put the glove back because he'd left me alone. Went back down and then the first shot went to attack him and he punched it in the nose. I mean, this is not good for animal rights lovers out there. No, but that's what you're supposed to do.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
I don't think so. I think they were just in a friendship. He head-butted the big shark. Did they interview the shark after?
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
He headbutted one of the sharks, the lemon shark, which I think was kind of bad. Those are big. 12 feet long.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
Afterwards, I did go up to him and I said, has anyone... In the end, I basically came over to check my oxygen and I completely run out of oxygen. And then we did some emergency procedure and... where you take his regulator.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
This is how we regulate. This is a very long ruse. We're both in this. We go down below.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
I did say to him, I said, has anyone ever got hurt on any of your dives? And he said, two people have died.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
For real. But it was painless. Yeah, he was a cave diver. Those guys are completely crazy. And, you know, he basically missed the fun and the thrill of cave diving.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
Not really. No, no, no, no. Have you ever skydived? Would you? I have not. I would not. Have you? Have you?
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
Firstly, thank you very much for that description. It was lovely. I could spend all day doing that. But please don't. I think it was the first time... Actually, the second time I did Borat. So basically, Borat was created... I was doing like a... a satellite TV show called F2F, where I was the host of it. It was a discussion show for teenage kids. We'd talk about everything.
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
And you'd talk about teen topics. And, you know, I wanted to be a comedian. And so I would go and pre-record characters that I could throw to. And basically, I went out once and...
SmartLess
"Sacha Baron Cohen"
I had a kind of skateboarding character that was an early form of Ali G. And then I basically saw some real skateboarders, and the guy I was with, this sort of old director from E-Link Studios, who had lost all his money and was working on this really shitty satellite TV show, I said, look, those guys look like me. I go, do you think I should talk to them? And he said, 100%.