'Borat 2' Aims To Expose The Danger Of Authoritarianism Through Comedy, Says Sacha Baron Cohen

Next week, Amazon brings us the surprise Borat sequel that we only just learned about barely a month ago. There's no better time for Kazakhstan's most famous reporter to come back to America, but this time comedian Sacha Baron Cohen hoped to achieve something different than he did the first time around. Though the primary goal of Borat: Subsequent Movie Film: Delivery of Prodigious Bride to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is to make us laugh through shocking and inappropriate behavior and the candid reactions of real people, the character does much more than deliver crass and crude humor.

Speaking with The New York Times, Sacha Baron Cohen points out how the world has changed since Borat came to America in 2006, but not necessarily for the better. Cohen says:

"In 2005, you needed a character like Borat who was misogynist, racist, anti-Semitic to get people to reveal their inner prejudices. Now those inner prejudices are overt. Racists are proud of being racists. My aim here was not to expose racism and anti-Semitism. The aim is to make people laugh, but we reveal the dangerous slide to authoritarianism."

Cohen took on even more risks and put himself in plenty of stressful situations to make this sequel. Not only did he wear a bullet proof vest to protect himself as much as possible during an appearance at a conservative rally held in Olympia, Washington, which he wasn't confident would keep him safe when the crowd ended up turning on him, but he had to spend five days in lockdown with a group of conspiracy theorists. Cohen recalled:

"The hardest thing I had to do was, I lived in character for five days in this lockdown house. I was waking up, having breakfast, lunch, dinner, going to sleep as Borat when I lived in a house with these two conspiracy theorists. You can't have a moment out of character."

Cohen even had to spend five hours in a bathroom at the Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this year, all so he could ambush Mike Pence's appearance at the event in full disguise as Donald Trump. In addition to being one of the biggest gags teased in the trailer, it actually made national news in February before we ever knew about the Borat sequel. What other surprising gags are in store for us? We'll find out when the movie hits Amazon Prime on October 23, 2020.