Sacha Baron Cohen Explains How ‘Borat’ Scene With Rudy Giuliani Almost Fell Apart

Of all the scenes from Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat: Subsequent Movieflim, the one that shows Rudy Giuliani putting his hand down his pants in the company of the Kazakh journalist’s teenage daughter caught the most attention. However, on Monday night, Baron Cohen revealed to Stephen Colbert that the infamous scene nearly fell apart.

“The interview starts and I switch on the phone and there’s only 3% battery and I go, ‘Hold on we’ve got Rudy Giuliani, we’ve got the president’s lawyer, we’ve got this scene – this is the climax of the movie and no one thought it might be worth charging the phone?’,” he said on A Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Baron Cohen said that the phone, which he kept alive for the rest of the Giuliani interview by switching on airplane mode, was the only way he could know what has happening between Donald Trump’s lawyer and Maria Bakalova’s 15-year-old Tutar. Hiding in a concealed wardrobe in the hotel room, the actor said only text messages from the depleted phone would be his cue to surprise the lawyer.

During the late-night segment, the Borat actor also responded to Giuliani’s assertions that the buzzworthy scene featured nothing incriminating.

“Well he said that he did nothing inappropriate and my feeling is that if he sees that as appropriate, heaven knows what he’s intended to do with other women in hotel rooms with a glass of whisky in his hand,” he said.

Baron Cohen and Colbert continued to discuss the new Borat film, the actor’s “rigorous process” of eventually casting the perfect Tutar and, of course, Trump.

Although Giuliani was the closest Borat got to the sitting president in the new Amazon film directed by Jason Woliner, Baron Cohen did reminisce that he did interview Trump as his character Ali G. long before Trump was president.

“I remember Donald Trump look at me and I was wearing a sweatsuit or something…his face dropped, he was immediately furious that he was going to have speak to someone from a lower class,” Baron Cohen said.

He said the interview with Trump ended abruptly and in a fashion that seems a bit familiar given the president’s recent 60 Minutes appearance.

“He made his excuses and left,” he said. “He completely believed that Ali G. was real.”

Watch Cohen’s comments about Trump in an additional segment below.

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