The most dangerous scene of Sacha Baron Cohen’s career: “I genuinely feared for my life”
Like countless other recently divorced dads in their 50s, Sacha Baron Cohen finds himself caught in the throes of a midlife crisis, which, in his case, means getting unnecessarily jacked and joining Marvel.
That’s not intended as an insult, since the actor and comedian literally told the world he was “hard-launching my midlife crisis” when he revealed his new ripped visage and opened up on being cast as the comic book character Mephisto in the comic book conglomerate’s streaming series, Ironheart.
It’s been over five years since the three-time Academy Award nominee appeared in a live-action film, and outside of a leading role in Netflix’s monochromatic rom-com, Ladies First, his dance card remains fairly empty. However, one thing he won’t be doing any time soon, if ever again, is his signature brand of undercover comedy.
Ali G, Brüno Gehard, Borat Sagdiyev, and the multitude of characters he played in the TV series Who Is America? defined his near-the-knuckle style, with Cohen disguising himself and placing himself into potentially precarious situations, which often resulted in his unwitting subjects saying or doing things they wished they’d never been caught on camera saying or doing.
It’s gotten him sued plenty of times, and if anything, it was a minor miracle that he was even able to make Borat Subsequent Moviefilm without getting rumbled, considering the intrepid Kazakh journalist became such a cultural phenomenon after his first feature-length outing in 2006 that you couldn’t go anywhere without hearing people shouting quotes at each other.
He managed it, though, and not without some serious risks. Heading deep into the heart of America’s red states was always going to be a disaster waiting to happen, and for only the second time in his career, Cohen wore a bulletproof vest when bringing Borat to a gun rights rally, describing the scene as a moment when he “genuinely feared for my life.”
“I was told that there was a chance that somebody might try to shoot at me,” he explained to NPR. “I was very aware that once the crowd realised that I was a fake, it could turn really ugly and it could be really dangerous.” Undeterred, he made sure he was sporting Kevlar underneath his costume, and the crew didn’t do much to assuage his concerns.
“I remember putting on the bulletproof vest before the scene, looking in the mirror of a nearby hotel, and I remember asking the makeup guy, ‘Do you think I’m going to get shot today?'” Unfortunately, words of encouragement didn’t have the desired effect. “He’s like, ‘No, no, no, no’. I said, ‘Well, why am I putting on the bulletproof vest then?’ And he didn’t really have an answer.”
In the end, nobody took a shot at him, but it definitely crossed someone’s mind. Cohen revealed that once the jig was up and everyone knew it was him, a crowd member pulled a gun, only for his security to intervene. When the gun rally attendees threatened to start a riot and storm the stage in protest at his covert appearance, he was whisked into an ambulance to make a daring escape, where he had to hold the door shut from the inside to prevent his would-be assailants from getting in.
