Earlier this week, we wrote about an unsettling scene in Sacha Baron Cohen’s new Borat sequel in which Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, acts like a creep with the “15-year old daughter” of Borat, who he believed to be a young female journalist.
In the scene, which you can view in full below, Giuliani follows Maria Bakalova, the 24-year old actor playing the 15-year old character, into a bedroom in the hotel room in which her interview with him was conducted. There, he touches her back, asks for her phone number and address, and then leans back weirdly with his hand in his pants after she removes his microphone. That’s when Baron Cohen, as a lingerie-clad Borat, bursts in: “She’s 15! She’s too old for you. Please, take me instead!”
Giuliani defended himself on Twitter following news of the scene, saying he was simply tucking in his shirt and that the stunt is “an effort to blunt my relentless exposure of the criminality and depravity of Joe Biden and his entire family.” (Seriously, though, who needs to lay down like that to tuck in their shirt?)
Now, Baron Cohen has issued two responses to Giuliani, one as himself and one as his character. “I here to defend America’s Mayor, Rudolph Giuliani. What was an innocent sexy-time encounter between a consenting man and my 15-year-old daughter has been turned into something disgusting by fake news media,” he said in a video posted on Twitter last night. “I warn you – anyone else try this and Rudolph will not hesitate to reach into his legal briefs and whip out his su-penis.”
This morning, meanwhile, Baron Cohen went on Good Morning America with Bakalova with an entirely different point of view. “If the president’s lawyer found what he did there to be appropriate behavior, then heaven knows what he’s done with other female journalists in hotel rooms,” he said. “I just urge everyone to watch the movie… it is what it is, he did what he did. Make your own mind to us, but it was pretty clear to us.”
Baron Cohen added that he was “concerned” for Bakalova as he monitored the encounter from another room, though she notes that she “always felt safe with our team, our crew and with Sacha in my corner.”
Watch the interview below:
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, which is as much a showcase for Bakalova as it is Baron Cohen, is now streaming on Amazon Prime. Read our review here.
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