Sacha Baron Cohen

The incomparable Sacha Baron Cohen joins HSC in honor of his new film, ALI G: WHO IZ I? Not only is Sacha a one-of-a-kind actor, he’s also an amazing storyteller. From sharing the surprising reason why he chose to bring back Ali G now, to giving a peek into his joke editing process, to recounting the lengths he went to in order to nail the shocking scenes in the film–if you’ve loved ALI G, BORAT, BRUNO, or any of Sacha’s characters, this is an in-depth conversation about the method behind the madness. Plus, tips on how to deliver the most Borat-esque “my wife,” the moment that made him feel seen by the MCU team, how he’s prepping to star in Quentin Tarantino’s latest project, and more! Recorded at the 92nd Street Y SUPPORT THE SHOW BY SUPPORTING OUR SPONSORS! Rula -- Rula patients typically pay $15 per session when using insurance. Connect with quality therapists and mental health experts who specialize in you at https://www.rula.com/happy #rulapod Quince -- Go to ⁠Quince.com/HAPPYSAD ⁠for free shipping and 365-day returns. Limited Time Offer–Get Huel today with my exclusive offer of 15% OFF online with my code happy15 at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://huel.com/happy15.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ New Customers Only. Thank you to Huel for partnering and supporting our show! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Josh Horowitz?

  Do people constantly want to do their versions of my wife to you? My wife, they, they, they just want-

• 0:05Speaker 01

  You can do it.

• 0:06Josh Horowitz?

  I just did it. I just did it.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  That was it.

• 0:07Josh Horowitz?

  That was it.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  You didn't give it the whole thing. Come on, give it-

• 0:09Josh Horowitz?

  My wife. My wife.

• 0:15Speaker 02

  Prepare your ears, humans. Happy, sad, confused begins.

• 0:23Josh Horowitz?

  Hey guys, it's Josh. Welcome to another edition of Happy, Sad, Confused. Today on the show, a first time guest, a very unique comic mind, Sasha Baron Cohen is on the podcast for the very first time, talking about Ali G, Borat, Bruno, and so much more. Thanks, guys, as always, for checking out the podcast. You know what to do. If you haven't already, hit that subscribe button to Happy Sad Confused episodes a week for your enjoyment. Plus, on the Patreon, if you're a Patreon member, there's a lot there. You get early access to every single episode. You get access to our live events, autographed merch, patreon.com/happysadconfused. By the way, on the live event front, there is a lot cooking. Okay, here's what I think

• 1:07Josh Horowitz?

  we already have announced. In just a couple of weeks, I am chatting with Jamie Dornan and Anthony Mackie together. They once made a movie together. They are now back together for an Apple series called 1212. If you've seen my stuff with both Mackie and Jamie, you know they are both super fun, let alone together. That combo will be epic. I'm very, very excited for that one. Also hugely excited about this, been trying to get him for a while, David Corn sweat, Superman himself, will be on the podcast for a live taping of Happy, Sad, Confused in early December at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. If you're in New York, get your tickets now because we are not only talking to David, but we're screening

• 1:48Josh Horowitz?

  his new film, Mr. Irrelevant, which I've gotten a chance to see is fantastic, tells a true story, a uplifting but also quite sad true story, a sports story about a Giants player. And David's excellent in it. And of course, we're going to talk Superman and much more, but you also get a chance to see a great movie a little bit early on that one. There are other events that I don't think have officially been announced yet, but at least two off the top of my head that I can think of that are going to be very major and will probably sell out. So all the more reason to check out our Patreon, patreon.com/happysadconfused because you get the early inside info on all those live events and discount codes and all sorts of fun stuff. Okay, let's talk about the main

• 2:28Josh Horowitz?

  event. This was a live event, actually. This was with Sasha Baron Cohen, who, as I say in this conversation, is kind of just like one of one. There are really not many that do it like him. I guess you could say someone like Nathan Fielder has kind of learned, you know, actually, he, I believe he wrote for, for Sasha on one of his shows way back when, in terms of putting these kind of like fictional or absurd characters out into the universe, but even Nathan doesn't do the extremes that Sasha does. Of course, Ali G was like the OG. That was the original character that made a big splash 20 plus years ago. And then there was Borat, which was a phenomenon, both in 2006, when the movie came out, then,

• 3:13Josh Horowitz?

  of course, in 2020, when the sequel came out. He's been Oscar nominated for both of those films. And then Bruno, of course, in the mix, the dictator, all his acting work in the likes of, you know, Les Mis and Sweetie Todd and working Aaron Sorkin in The Trial of Chicago 7, for which he got an Oscar nomination for his acting. He's really a singular talent, and I never had a chance to interview him actually as Sasha. Ironically, I've, I've interviewed him as his characters when he's like fully immersed in character, but this was the first time I got to know the real Sasha. And he was fantastic. He really doesn't do, A, he doesn't do a lot of long form, B, he doesn't do live events, actually, ever.

• 3:55Josh Horowitz?

  And so this was a real treat. This was a sold out event in New York City. 800 plus folks were out there. And this one has it all because we get serious, to be honest. There's like some really serious conversation about the issues that Sasha is dealing with in this movie, the, the questions he wanted answered in making this latest Ali G movie. And also, of course, his approach to comedy generally. He is, at his heart, kind of a clown, an absurd, very funny man, but has this very intellectual side. So this, this interview kind of has all the good things, everything I like in an interview, in that it is both smart and silly. I mean, yeah, the whole package. So I'm so thrilled this

• 4:38Josh Horowitz?

  one happened. I think you guys are going to dig this one. Check it out. I take you now to a live event at the 92nd Street Y. And I should say, by the way, the film, I haven't even mentioned the film's name. It's, it's Ali G, Who Is I? So check that out. Support the creative mad mind that is Sasha Baron Cohen's. And in the meantime, enjoy this conversation with me and Sasha. Here you go. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the 92nd Street Y. Thank you for selling out the 92nd Street Y tonight, guys. You're awesome. My name is Josh Horowitz. I host the podcast called Happy, Sad, Confused. You're inside of it right now, whether you knew it or not. Thank you for coming out tonight. I know why you sold out this venue tonight. We've got an

• 5:21Josh Horowitz?

  amazing actor, satirist, director. He's one of one. Sasha Baron Cohen is my guest tonight. Are you ready for this, guys?

• 5:32Josh Horowitz?

  There is truly no comp for what this man does. He devotes 1,000% of himself into every role, putting these insane fictional characters into real life circumstances. Literally no one else does it like him. Obviously, we know him from Borat, from Bruno, but the original, the OG, is of course Ali G. And Ali G, I'm happy to say, is back. You're absolutely going to love the new film, Ali G, Who Is I? There's no way to say that like any cooler than that, right? Please make him feel welcome. I think it's his first time at the 92nd Street Y, guys. It's Sasha Baron Cohen, everybody. Here he is.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  This is great. I love it. There's no Jews here, right?

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Okay, I can talk freely.

• 6:37Josh Horowitz?

  We're gonna go one by one, all 800 of you, Jew or not a Jew. That's a nice way to start. Do you want to take up a residency?

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Jews here, okay.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Row one, we're ready at 10. Okay.

• 6:51Josh Horowitz?

  Sasha, thank you so much for doing this. Congratulations on all the things, including this new insane-

• 6:56Speaker 01

  Wait a minute, there's some, move out of the way.

• 6:58Josh Horowitz?

  What do we got?

• 6:58Speaker 01

  Somebody's snapping shots in the back.

• 7:01Josh Horowitz?

  It's the paparazzi.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  Put me off already.

• 7:04Josh Horowitz?

  Let's restart. Hey, Sasha, I didn't see you there.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 7:07Josh Horowitz?

  Hey.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me. Thank you, Jews of New York. I love you.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  That's basically it. I'm gonna make you feel good tonight.

• 7:21Josh Horowitz?

  That's it. It's a love fest. They love you, you love them. Here's the funny thing. I was saying to you, this to you backstage. I have interviewed you a number of times over the years. I have never met Sasha Baron Cohen, though, technically speaking. I think we have an image. Can I show the, an image of me and Sasha?

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that was in 2012.

• 7:45Josh Horowitz?

  12, I think, right?

• 7:46Speaker 01

  That was the dictator. I, I, you know, we're driving over here, we drove past the United Nations. And that movie, I don't know if anyone's seen it.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  I'm gonna do that a few times. I don't know. And there's a massive scene in the United Nations. And so we met up with the committee there, the protocol committee, and we gave them the script. They were interested. They read the whole script and eventually they came back and they said, you are not allowed to shoot inside the United Nations. And we said, why? They said, well, your movie is anti dictatorship.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  I mean, like, what? They go, well, we represent dictatorships and democracies, and we don't want to really take a side. So we ended up rebuilding the General Assembly.

• 8:44Josh Horowitz?

  Oh, that's easy to do, I hear.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  We ended up like $15 million over because of that.

• 8:49Josh Horowitz?

  Is it because the first part of your career, you really didn't do much of this at all. You didn't do any of this. You never talked as yourself to the media.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:57Josh Horowitz?

  Are you comfortable now in your own skin? Like-

• 9:00Speaker 01

  No. I'm deeply, this is the character of a slightly pretentious, English, la di da di toff, with a few bits of Yiddish thrown in. And I'm a horror.

• 9:15Josh Horowitz?

  If I went back in a time machine to childhood Sasha Baron Cohen, if I met the parents, the family, the friends, was it all there? If I had seen you at five or six, were you an extrovert? Were the seeds there for what you became?

• 9:28Speaker 01

  I don't think so. Let me think back.

• 9:33Josh Horowitz?

  Time machine.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Not really. I mean, I did speak in voices.

• 9:38Josh Horowitz?

  Okay.

• 9:40Josh Horowitz?

  Imitating people on the screen, friends, family, like-

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Not that much. I was not that obnoxious. I don't really like little kids to do all of that kind of stuff.

• 9:48Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  I was studious. I played cello. My first appearance was playing cello on a TV show. And I was hoping for a little clap there. I'm basically here just massaging my ego. This is just, this is for me. It's a little of me.

• 10:03Josh Horowitz?

  Clap for every single answer of his tonight, please.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  And I don't know. I think, yeah, played a bit of cricket, bit of concuss. I don't think there was anything that remarkable about me. And then I became at the age of 11, maybe the connection with this was, I suddenly saw somebody do the robot.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  And I was like, that is amazing. And I, I started learning how to do the robot and starting to do breakdancing. So this was 1981, 1982.

• 10:34Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  And I became a breakdancer, a b-boy.

• 10:39Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  And obviously I was a white Jewish kid. I would go down to this place called Covent Garden. And we had some linoleum, we'd spray it up and do backspins. And in those days, it was the beginning of hip hop. And of course, I was this white Jewish, middle-class kid. And the dancing was, we would do battles. So we would battle against the local groups there. And it was, you know, I do that. And I, I was 11 and there's some big guys battling me and it was no violence. And it was amazing.

• 11:11Josh Horowitz?

  Did you want to go pro? Was there a path to an actual livelihood through beatboxing, breakdancing?

• 11:16Speaker 01

  There was not, there was not, but I did earn money. And I started doing b'mitzvahs as well as doing the thing. And I remember I was listening to, at that time, there was no kind of hip hop channel.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 11:35Josh Horowitz?

  Mystery beverage for Mr. Baron Cohen.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  Coffee.

• 11:38Josh Horowitz?

  There it is.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Coffee. And I was listening to, there were pirate radio stations. There was a particular DJ that I was listening to that I was sure was black and American. And I went to one of his gigs. I was 11 years old and I see this guy and I'm looking for him. I go, where is he? And I suddenly heard his voice and looked up behind the decks was this white, middle-class son of a bishop. And that was the origins of Ali G. I thought, this is hilarious. And he was this, what we call now cultural appropriator. I didn't know what the term was then, but I knew it was funny.

• 12:18Josh Horowitz?

  You would become familiar with that term a little bit over the years.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. It screamed at me when I walked down the street.

• 12:26Josh Horowitz?

  So when that character, and that character first appeared on the 11 o'clock show, do I have that right? Was it an immediate hit? Did Ali G immediately resonate back home?

• 12:36Speaker 01

  So I had been developing Borat, actually, for the BBC. It was, and if the BBC are watching this now, they might actually sue me because

• 12:47Josh Horowitz?

  They're like, wait, what?

• 12:48Speaker 01

  It had a different name then and Borat was from Albania. So I want to apologize to the people of Kazakhstan for the first time ever. Because Borat has got nothing to do with Kazakhstan. Borat's nation changed continually depending on which channel was paying for him. So I, I would just say, oh, that character's in the BBC. I've got a completely new character. This guy's called Alexei Krkla, he's from Moldavia. So it jumped around and then finally, when we did it on HBO, I needed another place because HBO suddenly owned it. And I was like, where is a place that no one knows anything about? Kazakhstan.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  So guys, Kazakstanis out there, maybe some of you have been sent here on a, on a specific mission. I'm asking you to abort that mission. I mean no harm. I respect your people, your culture. Please do not take it personally. And in fact, when I first started doing Borat, there was a complaint, quite rightly, from the Kazakh embassy. And I read it and it was like, how dare you? I'm sorry, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do, and Kazakstanis out there, I apologize, I cannot do your accent. I don't know your accent. You look nothing like Borat, right? I mean, it's next to Mongolia.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Nothing like Borat, but they, I'm gonna do Borat's accent because my knowledge of Central Asian accents is limited. So I will, please do not be offended, Kazakstanis. I mean, nothing but respect.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Dear Mr. Com, why does your character have a moustache like this? Kazakstanis do not have a moustache. Et cetera, et cetera. And the reality was, it had nothing to do with Kazakhstan and everything to do with the ignorance of the people I was speaking to, who could believe these crazy things would happen in a place they'd never heard of.

• 14:57Josh Horowitz?

  Isn't it?

• 14:58Speaker 01

  That was a very long answer.

• 14:59Josh Horowitz?

  It was great, though. Does everybody want to do?

• 15:01Speaker 01

  It was good, it was good.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Thank you, thank you. Every, every little clap.

• 15:10Josh Horowitz?

  We are on a roll.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  It's nice for me, but it's good for you. We're, we're sharing the love, we're gonna make each other feel good. At the end of this hour, you're gonna think like, there's no antisemitism outside. This is basically the whole world.

• 15:23Josh Horowitz?

  In this room.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  Just a bunch of 95% happy, smiling Jews, laughing, feeling good about themselves. It's gonna be exactly the same when you go on to the streets of the new New York.

• 15:42Josh Horowitz?

  We solved it all, tonight, right here. Look at us.

• 15:49Josh Horowitz?

  More Happy Say Confused coming up.

• 15:55Speaker 03

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• 18:09Josh Horowitz?

  Before we come to Ali G's return, I want to talk briefly of Ali G back in the day because obviously, a lot of it was putting Ali G with these brilliant luminaries, you know, the C. Everett Coops, the, you know, the politicians, et cetera. And then this, I wouldn't call a brilliant luminary, but a luminary, Donald Trump. And thus a great friendship was born. You guys have been tight ever since.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  Very close, very close. Very happy about that.

• 18:36Josh Horowitz?

  What was your read on him leaving that room that day?

• 18:40Speaker 01

  Well, so again, as Ali G, I had the privilege of sitting with some of the smartest people in the world and some of the most powerful people in the world, and all of them were punctual.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  Donald Trump kept us waiting for about 40 minutes and I could hear him in his office and he was like, get me the mayor! That's the worst Donald Trump thing. It's the equivalent of my Kazakhstan impression. And he gets Giuliani on the phone and he's shouting at him and screaming at him, expletives that I will not use for the, your delicate Jewish ears. And I was intimidated. I was intimidated. He came in and I was intimidated by this guy. He's a big guy. And later on, I heard that he used to do that with other people. So he actually wasn't.

• 19:34Josh Horowitz?

  That was the power move, that was, yeah.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  But it really was a power move. And then he came in and we had this very handsome, blonde, Oxford-educated director. Hello, hello there, hello there, Mr. Trump. And he was very excited. Good-looking, you know, handsome, upper-class English guy called James Bobin. And he's, it was okay, let's do the interview. And he goes, no, that's the interview. He looked down, I'm saying that, I was like, yawn.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Immediately the face drops.

• 20:03Josh Horowitz?

  That was, that was your technique with most of these, right? Like it was the redirect.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then I actually met a woman who was in the car with him after that interview. And he was apparently furious.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  And he actually went out publicly a couple of times to criticize me. And in the end, we used all those clips and used them to advertise another show that I did. So thank you, President Trump. But it's interesting looking at that now, and it's gonna bring me on to my theme, that there is no black and white and the world is a little bit complicated. And that is, looking at that now with fresh eyes, there are a couple of, obviously, he is very misinformed, right? Human beings were not around for millions of years.

• 20:56Josh Horowitz?

  That is a fact.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Perhaps 300,000 years. When they started doing business, they did not trade in rocks. Perhaps on the Flintstones.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  But historians and archaeologists imagine that it was probably salt. But he says a couple of interesting things here. Number one, which is intelligent, music, it might be actually something that everybody loves. And the second thing was the non-drip ice cream was not a bad idea. So there are elements of brilliance to him. I mean, how has he survived, you know, a second term? People underestimated him. And I think that we were too easy to dismiss him as a nincompoop, where, and I will be using odd English words like nincompoop. But, you know, there are elements of brilliance to him.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Otherwise, and that explains his appeal, the fact that he's there for a second term, the fact that he's transforming this country. We won't say positively or negatively. Who are these people holding coffee cups? Are these sedaka boxes? Is this Yom Kippur? Because I meant to give, I put the thing through the hole, but I couldn't find my card. Okay, they are...

• 22:23Josh Horowitz?

  We're taking up a collection.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  What are these? Are they eunuchs?

• 22:26Josh Horowitz?

  They're gonna be the questions.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Holding like the end of The Last Emperor, holding their genitals as they're thrown away and asked to leave the Forbidden City.

• 22:36Josh Horowitz?

  That's the gift at the end of the night, you get genitals. Hey, congratulations on the new film, it is amazing.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  Thank you very much.

• 22:43Josh Horowitz?

  Truly. There are a couple of firsts in this, there's some new characters in this that Sasha plays, Beyond Ali G, you direct this for the first time, which is very exciting. Whatever, whatever. I think it's the first, I think it's the first comedy that ever begins, ever has begun with a Voltaire quote, I'm not sure, I have to fact check that.

• 23:07Speaker 01

  It is.

• 23:09Josh Horowitz?

  Why bring Ali G back now? Has this been on your mind for a while? What about 2026 said, this is the time?

• 23:16Speaker 01

  So I can give you the long answer or the short answer?

• 23:19Josh Horowitz?

  Well, it's a podcast, you can give, medium.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  Okay, so the medium answer was, okay, the short answer is this, that Ali G is a character that cannot exist in 2026 because he's a cultural appropriator, because he's so problematic, and that's exactly why I wanted to bring him back. And to bring him back in a way that reveals how we've changed. And the only way you can do that is by introducing two new characters that I play. One is his arch nemesis, who is a guy called Dr. Nira Kane and Deguccello.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  He is, he makes AOC look like she's MAGA, basically, that's how woke he is. And he despises Ali G, thinks he's the new Hitler, and he's currently actually running a campaign to boycott this movie. And then on the other end of the political spectrum, we have a guy called Colonel Iran Morad. I knew that one would go down better here.

• 24:36Josh Horowitz?

  You found the right audience.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  And he operates in the world of conspiracy theorists and people who are terrified of the other, Islamophobes, people who are racist, and gets them to do extreme things. And I thought, having Ali G in the middle, this guy who is deeply problematic, but fundamentally, he's actually a good guy, and he believes in increasing the peace, he believes in respect. And it's something that we've lost, and he says a few things, he's this naive idiot who has these horrific views, but he really does want the world to be better. And there's a moment at the end, some crazy stuff happens.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  And by the way, these are the craziest things you will ever see on film, right?

• 25:27Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  They are so crazy.

• 25:31Josh Horowitz?

  The things you do with yourself in this film, not right.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, we can get on to that. But the, you know, they were so crazy that the audiences just didn't believe that it could possibly be true. And so we ended up having to stop the movie at one point and go, this is actually happening. Because we, you know, we'd show the audience, go, there's no way this is true, people would not do such crazy shit. And so we had to actually show behind the scenes footage in the movie. I mean, arguing with my editors, going, we're gonna put some of the behind the scenes documentary inside the movie. It was incomprehensible, but at the end of the day, Ali G makes this comment, it becomes wild and violent at the end, and he says, we don't have to kill each other just because

• 26:19Speaker 01

  we disagree. Right? And it feels like we're in this online world of hatred and faceless, angry people who intimidate us. And it's time to put the phones away and be in rooms like this and talk to each other and talk to people we disagree with and find commonality.

• 26:44Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 26:45Speaker 05

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• 27:29Speaker 05

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• 28:13Josh Horowitz?

  Enhanced with award-winning soundscapes and music, Dark Dice mixes the role of the dice with the drive to survive. So join us and hear the horrors of Dark Dice wherever you listen to podcasts. It strikes me through all of your characters over the years, you've kind of faced the best and worst of humanity in different circumstances, right? You've seen the people kind of cheering on, throw the Jew down the well, and the ones that rebelled against it. Like, I'm happy to hear that you, because you're in the wild, you're seeing these people up close, you at, in 2026, as we sit here today, you have some, some faith still in our humanity, even putting these extreme characters out there, you're seeing that.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  I have complete faith in humanity. I believe that most people are good.

• 29:01Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  Again, listen, I'm not a sociologist, but I've gone on these tours of the US, bizarrely, the first one was aged 19, when I was doing my undergraduate thesis, then in The Ali G Show, then Borat, the first Borat, then Bruno, then Who Is America, and Borat 2, and now Ali G Who Is I. And what I've realized is that humans really are capable of anything, right? Either incredible empathy or extreme violence.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  And that depends on a few things, and it depends on the ideas that they are fed. And what I wanted to show, the movie I wanted to be absolutely hilarious, we'll get into that, but I wanted to show the danger of the lies that are being propagated on social media, and to investigate this theory of when leaders lie, people actually can die. And so the whole last act of the movie is a version of something called the Milgram Experiment. Where, shall I get into that?

• 30:19Josh Horowitz?

  Let's do it.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Okay, all right, okay, it's getting a little heavy. Okay, so the Milgram Experiment, probably a lot of you know about it out there. Professor Stanley Milgram, World War II happens, and goes, how the hell did that happen? How did the most cultured society in the world, Germany, that produced Wagner and Mozart and incredible artists, how did those people turn into murderers of innocent people? And so he did this experiment, which was basically, he had an actor in an electric chair, and they would get in volunteers, they'd have another actor, and it was sometimes Milgram himself in a lab coat, and he said, you know, in the interest of science, we're

• 31:05Speaker 01

  going to do this experiment, if they get the answer wrong, turn up the voltage, and it was an electric chair. Once you get to eight, they probably will die, once you're at nine, they're almost definitely dead, at 10, they're dead. And the vast majority of real people, when instructed to turn up the dial, killed the subjects. And so I wanted to see whether we could do that with real people in the real world, but real people who believed in conspiracy theories. Right? And it was particularly to investigate this new conspiracy theory, this new form of racism called the Great Replacement Theory, which you've all probably heard about.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  And we thought, could these people who believe that the white race is under threat, that there's a genocide against white people, could you tell them the most hilarious lie ever? Not just a little lie, a lie that is so absurd that Ali G has got 150,000 children. An absurd lie.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  And to convince them to kidnap his girlfriend. Um, as a result, and they, I won't say what happens, but that was the experiment.

• 32:26Josh Horowitz?

  So that is a good reminder that, most importantly, it's very fucking funny.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  It is, yeah. I know we've been getting serious, but, okay, there is, the vast majority of this film is extremely funny. And there'll be reviews coming out tomorrow going, "I didn't find it funny." "The new Ali G movie is simply not funny." Those reviewers are completely fucking wrong. Let me explain how I know. I have screened the movie fifteen times with crowds as big as yours, and what I do is I record the volume of the laughter. If stuff isn't working, I get rid of it. I put in new fancy funnier jokes, and the jokes that are there, I then tweak them until they are

• 33:13Speaker 01

  much funnier. So we know empirically that these movies, and this movie is very funny. So if any of you are home-

• 33:23Josh Horowitz?

  It's science.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  They go, "It's not funny!" You could go, "Dad, you're wrong."

• 33:28Josh Horowitz?

  I've seen the data.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  And we will publish the data.

• 33:32Josh Horowitz?

  Can you rank the intelligence of Borat, Bruno, and Ali G? Their IQ levels. Who's smartest? Who's dumbest in those three?

• 33:39Speaker 01

  Okay, so Ali G is the most stupid person in the world.

• 33:43Josh Horowitz?

  Okay.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  Really, I mean, he's a clown. I studied clown, and, you know, the theory of my clown teacher, the late great Philippe Goliere, was, "More stupid than this, and you die." So the idea was, literally, if it, just one tiny iota, one IQ point less than Ali G, he would die. He would die. Which is not possible to live. Okay, then above him-

• 34:11Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  What did you say, Bruno-

• 34:13Josh Horowitz?

  Bruno or Borat.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Bruno is stupid. Bruno is superficial and stupid. He is a vacuous twit. He contradicts himself. He is only interested in what is in. And he's obsessed by fashion, which is, let's be honest, an absurd industry. Weird. They just sell you the same thing again, and again, and again. Uh, so it relies on the Brunos. Um, but obviously, the Bruno movie is, you know, it exposed homophobia and that kind of stuff. Then I would say Borat is ignorant.

• 34:51Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  He's not stupid.

• 34:53Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah, there's a difference.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  He's physically incapable. Finds it hard to walk around, extremely hard to run.

• 35:03Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  Climbing on the stage would probably take a few goes. He'd fall off. He's a clown. But he's not stupid.

• 35:11Josh Horowitz?

  He means well, besides the horrible things he says about Jews. Um... How often in your life do people-

• 35:20Speaker 01

  They've become quite popular, those Boratos.

• 35:24Josh Horowitz?

  Do people constantly want to do their versions of "my wife" to you? "My wife," they just want-

• 35:30Speaker 01

  You can do it.

• 35:30Josh Horowitz?

  "I just did it. I just did it."

• 35:31Speaker 01

  That was it.

• 35:32Josh Horowitz?

  That was it.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  You didn't give it the whole thing. Come on, give us-

• 35:34Josh Horowitz?

  "My wife."

• 35:35Speaker 01

  "My wife!"

• 35:41Josh Horowitz?

  Is there, is there an art to it? Any, any tips for those trying to perfect the "my wife"?

• 35:47Speaker 01

  Just give it more. Just give it more.

• 35:49Josh Horowitz?

  Just commit.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  Don't, don't ever be embarrassed. That's my advice to everyone out there. You're Jews. You don't need that tip.

• 35:57Josh Horowitz?

  Well, that was actually a question I was gonna ask you. Are you capable of embarrassment? I mean, in what-

• 36:02Speaker 01

  Yes, I am.

• 36:02Josh Horowitz?

  In what circumstances do you find yourself feeling embarrassed?

• 36:06Speaker 01

  I can be embarrassed, and I do, I am a human being with human feelings. And every time I'm about to do any of these scenes with real people, I'm terrified. I don't want to do it. I go, "What the hell am I doing this stupid thing for? I'm in my fifties. This is ridiculous. I should be playing golf." I'm friendly with Larry David. He goes and plays golf. I go, and I go, these terribly unpleasant things. I, I am nervous, and I am very embarrassed. But when I'm in character, I'm in the character, so-

• 36:45Josh Horowitz?

  Because you know, and you've done plenty of roles where it hasn't been this kind of technique, it doesn't have to be this hard, Sasha. You can just be in Martin Scorsese movies, Judd Apatow movies, whatever, but you put yourself through what must be like, I mean, as you alluded to, we see it literally in the credits and interstitials in this film, just the degree of difficulty is mad.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, this is the hardest film we've ever made. We have a, a man working this called Rob Legato. He won three Oscars. One of them was for Titanic. And he said, he worked on all the Scorsese movies, every difficult movie in history. He said, "This is the most difficult movie ever shot." And the last scene really is the most difficult scene ever shot. It's eight hours long. It takes place over twelve locations, fifty miles. We had a crew of two hundred. We have a cam, continuous shot. So nineteen seventeen, that was one and a half hours. This is eight hours. I am in character continually with a fake prosthetic head

• 37:51Speaker 01

  and a fat suit. There are explosions in it, drones. Halfway through, somebody gives birth. It is fucking crazy. And we try this scene, and we do it once, again, hundreds of people. And variety of locations. It starts off in that gym that you just saw, where he's going, you know, "The immigrants." And while I'm in that gym, I hear the assistant director goes, "There's a forest fire that started." Or a desert fire. I don't know what they, what burns in a desert fire.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  Anyway, it's moving, and we have, you know, these twelve locations. He goes, "We should move." We stay, we start the mission. These guys, by the way, don't know that they're in an action movie, right? They think they're on a mission. They think that they are showing their allegiance. And they were in this Milgram experiment, but they are actually in our movie, and they're about to kidnap the girlfriend of Ali G, because they think it's for the benefit of society.

• 39:05Josh Horowitz?

  The greater good.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  And basically, we start this thing, we go on the mission, and location four gets surrounded by fire, and they have to evacuate it. We abort the mission, and we shut down the movie. The scene cost four million dollars, and I did go, "We're insured, right? We're insured." Uh, my line producer said, "Yes, we're insured, we're insured," and then she went for a million dollars. And that cost me three million dollars, which is why I'm here.

• 39:34Josh Horowitz?

  So support Sasha.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  Those tucker boxes are going to the Baron Cohen Foundation. But, but yes, it was a stupid, and we finish that scene. We're like, we all got together, me and my team. We go, "This is ridiculous."

• 39:48Josh Horowitz?

  Yes, collective insanity, yeah.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  "Why are we trying to make the most difficult movie ever, the hardest scene? Let's give it up. Let's just do what we used in Borat, which is we do a couple of scenes a day." But foolishly, we got back together, we regrouped, and we did the scene again, and it worked.

• 40:06Josh Horowitz?

  So you have said several times in your career at various points that you've retired characters, and you're saying it again now. Like, how seriously should I take the fact that you're saying, like, "Borat is gone forever, Ali G is gone forever"?

• 40:20Speaker 01

  You're implying that I'm a liar. Uh, you should take it very seriously. So I made this movie, you know, why make the most difficult movie in history? You're right. I should not have done. I've wasted three years of my life. Um, because I wanted to show, I wanted to make the audience and my fans laugh incredibly hard and incredibly often, and have an amazing communal experience. And I will do anything to make my fans and those people laugh. But also, I was scared about the way society is going. I didn't want to lecture about it.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  I didn't want to be a kind of celebrity who's on his soapbox. Uh, but I was scared about the extremes of society, the fact that through social media, we're spreading these lies that are becoming these shared sets of lies, and autocracies, and, um-

• 41:31Speaker 01

  Dictatorships rely on shared lies and democracies rely on these shared truths. So that whole idea of Borat saying, you know, "Throw the Jew down the well", it's, um, it's great because, and it works because the audience at the time go, you know, "In my country there is problem and that problem is the Jew. They take everybody's money and they never give it back. So grab him by his horns." Now, it's funny for the audience because we know that Jews don't have horns.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  And also, we know that the idea of Jews grabbing money is based on a medieval lie. Because we were moneylenders, we all know that, right? But when we get rid of these shared facts and we create new shared lies about Jews or other ethnicities or genders or sexualities or races, we're in a very dangerous place. And we are in this world where conspiracy theories, which used to be incredibly hard to read and hear, are now spread far faster than the truth, right?

• 42:50Speaker 01

  It's, in 2019, I gave this speech, which I really didn't want to do, but I was saying that, and we all know this now, that conspiracy theories and lies spread far faster on social media than the truth. The truth is boring, it's complicated, nobody wants to hear it. And so that's why I wanted to show, here's the problem, when you hear Mark Zuckerberg or one of these billionaires that own these social media companies say, "Hey, it's just freedom of speech, we're just, it's the algorithm." There's a danger in that, right? This has got nothing to do with freedom of speech. This is inciting racial hatred, this is inciting violence, and this is the biggest propaganda

• 43:33Speaker 01

  machine in history, and we know where that ends up. And that's why I wanted to show that these, we could get intelligent people, and within a matter of hours, if they believed this conspiracy theory, this particular one being about the Great Replacement, this new racist theory, could we turn them into murderers in a matter of hours? And if we could turn them into murderers, what are the lessons for society? So that's why I made this incredibly difficult movie, and it's why I would love it if you watched it.

• 44:16Josh Horowitz?

  I would guess you've pursued trying to get Zuckerberg on camera over the years. Have you come close to ever trying to, ever getting him in a room with one of your characters?

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Uh, not Zuck. I mean, very early on, I did try and influence him. I just thought, "Oh, he's just a good guy, he doesn't understand that Facebook is doing this." Actually, an email I'd sent got sent to him and it recently got released. And in it, there was, it was, there was a line that said, you know, "We can make Facebook a platform for good, like Sacha Baron Cohen and other elitists are suggesting. Or we can make it a platform for everyone." In other words, good and evil.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  And so I never managed to get him. I do think there's a responsibility of those, the handful of billionaires that are in control of information, that means they're in control of our minds, right? We are affected by what we see, the visuals, by the information. There is no source of fact anymore that we really trust. And that's terrifying, and I don't know where we go from here, actually.

• 45:37Josh Horowitz?

  Can I, can I ask you, while I've got you a little bit about your, it's not a side hustle, but like you're acting for other directors. I mean, look at the list of directors that he's worked with, you know, Tim Burton, Martin Scorsese, Aaron Sorkin, Alfonso Cuarón, Adam McKay. A nice, a nice grouping, an Oscar nomination for Trial of the Chicago Seven. Generally speaking, are you, do you turn off a little bit? I mean, obviously you want to have some, that creative collaboration on set, but are you good at kind of like toggling it down when there's a Martin, Martin Scorsese there?

• 46:11Speaker 01

  Not really. So, you know, with Marty, I mean, he was amazing because, you know, he has no ego. Those people at the top, they have, they are complete collaborators. And I had an idea for a scene where I have like a metal brace, I bet, it's this movie called Hugo, I'm in this train station, I've got this metal brace. The original idea I had actually was, because it was the, one of the first, first movie shot fully in 3D, was I wanted to have a, a false leg and for it to run around a corner and the leg to fly off into camera.

• 46:50Speaker 01

  But it then became a brace and I might actually get in trouble with the ableist community. But, um, anyway, so we were shooting this scene that I came up with, you know, I go, "What about, I run around the corner and my leg goes into the double base." And in front of his entire crew, he said, he said, "This is a comedy scene. Sasha, how do we direct this?" And I was like, "What? Me?" You know, and I just un-Borat. And I was like, "Well, I would, you know, if it was just me, I would do this, this shot." And he said, "All right, everyone, let's do those shots." And I realized then the power of collaboration, that this guy wanted the best movie, it was nothing to do with his ego.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  And you give that list of directors, and what I really wanted to do was, I wanted to be better at my craft. I wanted to learn how to direct. Finally, I directed this movie. And with each movie I did, I tried to pick up tips from all of them. With Marty, he would sit inside a tent and look at these monitors. And I said, "Marty, is there any way I could just sit behind you, be completely silent?" Obviously, I wasn't silent. "Marty, what about you just do..."

• 48:07Josh Horowitz?

  "You're doing great."

• 48:08Speaker 01

  "Yeah, Marty, well done, you got this. You're gonna be great." And I sat there for a few months. And then I did a movie with Tom Hooper, Les Misérables. And from him, I learned, normally when you shoot a movie, you start with the wide, then you get to the mid-shot, then you get to a close. Tom Hooper starts with the close. And I was like, "What?" And then I realized it was a brilliant idea because he gets all these actors to win Oscars. Why? He'll do 80 takes until they give an Oscar-winning performance. I mean, a monkey could give an Oscar-winning performance. And then it's like, "Okay, we do the wide and now the, you know, the mid-shot, and you're done."

• 48:53Speaker 01

  And I think probably he gets the highest proportion of Oscars per movie compared. So that's what I was really doing was working with these geniuses and thinking, what can I take and use for my own movies? And sometimes I would actually steal crew as well. This guy, Rob Legato, who had worked on Martin Scorsese, we have a four-time Oscar winner, Colleen Atwood, who worked with Tim Burton. So I would always be there going, "Oh, that one." "How much will you work for?"

• 49:25Josh Horowitz?

  "Join the circus."

• 49:25Speaker 01

  "Would you like to do an eight-hour scene?"

• 49:27Josh Horowitz?

  Exactly. How insane are you? And coming up next, it should be said, some of you might know this, Sasha is gonna be making his, I believe it's your West End debut, onstage with Quentin Tarantino, a play that he has written and is directing.

• 49:44Josh Horowitz?

  The Poppin' Jay Cavalier.

• 49:47Josh Horowitz?

  How did this happen? I know that like he wanted you for Django way back when. What about the script excited you? I guess when Quentin calls, you say, "Hell, yeah."

• 49:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, when Quentin calls, you say, "Yup."

• 50:00Speaker 01

  So, you know, I think he's the greatest director around, and a lot of other people do, it's not a very original comment. And about 20 years ago, we started meeting up for dinner and he was very interested in the Scarlet Pimpernel. And I was like, "Oh, that's an interesting genre." And this play really is in that genre of the kind of 1930s, 1940s swashbuckler movies. And I almost ended up in Django Unchained. I had, they actually built prosthetics for me. I ended up having to go and shoot Les Misérables, I was editing The Dictator, and I think the movie was long enough as it was.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  And yeah, I called him up once, actually, in Inglourious Basterds, I wanted to be, was it The Jewcatcher? I wanted to play that. And he gave it to some other guy, I don't know how it turned out, but. And then, so when he came and he came to my office and said, you know, I'd read it, and I thought he wanted me to play the villain, everyone always wants me to play the villain. And he said, "What's your favorite character?" I go, "The villain's pretty good, this French guy's really funny, but my favorite character is the lead, that guy's amazing." And he goes, "Why don't you play him?" So that's what I'm doing now, I'm doing about 10 hours a week of sword fighting lessons.

• 51:27Josh Horowitz?

  Amazing.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  Sword and dagger. A Jew with a sword. Last guy was, you know, David, no, he had a sling, they didn't trust him with a sword. Maybe it's Saul, I don't know. But Sheba, but Sheba for the tourist scholars.

• 51:43Josh Horowitz?

  And that delicious, one-of-a-kind Tarantino dialogue, we're gonna...

• 51:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's fantastic. I will probably ruin it and may get skewered onstage, but it's definitely good fun.

• 51:54Josh Horowitz?

  I mean, will that be like, again, we've kind of talked about what fear, if there is any, in your work, like stepping onto a stage for, for that kind of run, does that fill you with a little bit of...

• 52:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's gonna be terrifying, particularly because there are swords and

• 52:10Speaker 01

  all my tutors, the sword masters, they all have terrible scars. Like all of it's, I go, "Is this safe?" They go... They go, "It's unlikely you'll get in." What do you mean unlikely? What about like a hundred percent?

• 52:25Josh Horowitz?

  You have one eye. What's going on?

• 52:29Speaker 01

  One arm, yeah. And yeah, they're like that Monty Python.

• 52:32Josh Horowitz?

  Exactly.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  And they go, "It's unlikely." They go, "You know, the issue is, it's a long run. It's seven months in the West End in London."

• 52:40Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  And they go, "After three months, people get sloppy." I go, "This is not what I want to hear, but I've already committed." And I, my sword fighting would be good.

• 52:52Josh Horowitz?

  Obviously.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  I think there's about forty people fighting with swords and daggers onstage. Again, Kazakhstanis out there, I have nothing but respect for you, for your country, or it had nothing to do with you. I know you're a wonderful people. Please do not send any of your actors undercover to play one of those. I apologize.

• 53:13Josh Horowitz?

  Now is the time. Um, you also joined the MCU, Mephisto. This was like rumored for a thousand years that Mephisto was gonna join, and then look who it ended up being, the great Sacha Baron.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  You know, it was wonderful when, so Mephisto is kind of the devil, right? Based on Mephistopheles. And it was a wonderful meeting when I was offered it. So it was a primarily, I think, almost entirely black producing and directing team. And they said, "We want to offer you Mephisto, but we are aware of the negative association of Jews historically with the devil, and we want to make sure that you're not insulted by us offering this." And I thought it was such an amazingly considerate, empathetic thing to say. And I was like, "Yeah."

• 54:07Josh Horowitz?

  I'm good.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it was, it was an amazing experience. I thought that kind of empathy, and I think for the Jews out there, sometimes we don't feel seen. We don't feel like people can empathize with us, that we are suffering too. And so to have this entirely black producing and directing team be so empathetic.

• 54:31Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  It was just like a moment of being seen. So I thanked them, and I had the most incredible experience making it.

• 54:40Josh Horowitz?

  That goes back to, I mean, you referenced your first visit to America way back when, was kind of studying the civil rights movement and the role of Jews in the black civil rights movement at the time, right?

• 54:50Speaker 01

  So I was nineteen years old, I was in university, and it was time to do a thesis. So I had two options. One was to study, something to do with Poland and Jewish history in Poland. And one, I had this idea of looking into something called the Jewish Black Alliance. And the idea was, at that time, in the sixties, the Jewish community and the black community got together and helped each other essentially, and the Jewish Black Alliance. And I ended up choosing that. I got a grant of, I think, five hundred dollars. And I ended up, for a month, going around different places in the US,

• 55:34Speaker 01

  meeting up with old civil rights leaders. I met amazingly with one of the heads of the civil rights movement, a guy called Robert Moses, Bob Moses, the head of SNC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. And I was investigating this phenomenon, that Jews were about thirty times more likely than average white people to be involved in the black civil rights movement. And yet, there was very little written about it. And it actually brings me back to this movie, because my thesis was called, "The Black Jewish Alliance: A Case of Mistaking Identities." And it was all really about identity politics, about

• 56:14Speaker 01

  how, who we see ourselves as, and how people perceive us. So there are these, a murder of three people, Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman. For those of you who've seen Mississippi Burning, it starts with that murder. And two of them were Jews, and one of them was black.

• 56:32Speaker 01

  Chaney was black, Schwerner and Goodman were Jews, obviously. Jewish names, Schwerner, Schwerner, Goodman, you know. "Where are you?" You know. And

• 56:45Speaker 01

  this became the symbol of the Black Jewish Alliance, like, our blood was mixed, we were murdered by the KKK. And the phenomenon was, at the end of the sixties, there was a sense that the black community had turned on the Jewish community, and it was a betrayal. It was also organizations like SNC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Panthers. And so I wanted to look into that. And what I basically concluded from that was, even though Jews were disproportionately involved, there was no, my argument was, there was no Black Jewish Alliance.

• 57:27Speaker 01

  Because to be in an alliance, you have to know that you're in an alliance. And these Jews, they'd be in churches in Mississippi and in the South for the Freedom Rides. And what, the evidence that I found was that the black activists had no idea that the white people amongst them were Jews. So I sat down with this guy, one of the heads of the civil rights movement. And I was going, "Let's talk about the Black Jewish Alliance, Mr. Moses." And he said, "What Jews? I didn't know anything about Jews." So I went through all the members, the leadership, the white leadership. I go, "This guy, Jewish." "Chaimi Shrilovsky." "Chaimi Shrilovsky is Jewish?"

• 58:11Speaker 01

  "Nete!" You know, anyway, I'm gonna do some Jewish names. And then, he had no idea, because they were perceived as white. And you see this example of, you know, you see Heschel marching with Martin Luther King, and, you know, he's got a s- Then they realized they were Jews, you know, carrying a sefer Torah, a yarmulke on top, a beard. Then, yeah, we're Jews.

• 58:36Josh Horowitz?

  I think that's a Jew, yeah, I'm pretty sure.

• 58:38Speaker 01

  But these, they had no idea that the people in the room were Jews, right? So.

• 58:44Josh Horowitz?

  Amazing. Um, obviously an informative moment for your life and career. Uh, we do have some questions from our lovely audience. Max V wants to know, "How is it possible that people still don't recognize you when you prank them?" Do you ever like feel that in the moment, like you're kind of like, you see them sussing you out, that they're?

• 59:03Speaker 01

  So we have a very big crew who do advanced prep, and it's extremely difficult. So in England, Ali G is very well-known. I mean, Ali G is so well-known that the mother of the Queen, the Queen Mother, was a fan. And according to Prince William and Prince Harry, at a Christmas dinner, the Queen asked her mother, "How was lunch?" And she said, "Wuyakasha." They literally, Prince Harry and William, literally told that story.

• 59:35Josh Horowitz?

  That's insane.

• 59:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, to make this movie, there's a scene with a doctor, you saw him. And we had to interview, the research team had to interview thirteen hundred doctors until they found somebody who didn't know who Ali G was. So that's also a reason why it takes so long. And then when I'm in the room also, I'm sussing them out. If they are suspicious, they leave, you know.

• 1:00:00Josh Horowitz?

  Peggy and Ed want to know, which of your characters?

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  Peggy and Ed?

• 1:00:03Josh Horowitz?

  Peggy and Ed! Which of your characters is most like you?

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  Well, when I started doing Ali G, I was unemployed, and my parents had stopped giving me money. So I started wearing Ali G's clothes out and about. They're very comfortable, so I kind of looked like Ali G. Which one is most like me?

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  I would have to really know who I am to answer that, so I'm gonna pass.

• 1:00:37Josh Horowitz?

  Okay.

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  It was a little bit of a clap, but then you realize that's nothing to be proud about. The guy has no self-awareness. What the hell is he doing onstage, talking to us, a guy who doesn't know who he is? So quite rightly, you clap. What is it?

• 1:00:53Josh Horowitz?

  There it is. There it is.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  Who knows why they're clapping, but it's good, it's a good feeling. Let's spread the love, increase the peace, increase the peace. Spread the love, spread the love.

• 1:01:05Josh Horowitz?

  What are the strangest offers you get for your characters? Like, do you get like, "Oh, officiate the wedding, do the bar mitzvah, do the voicemail"? I mean, you must get such insane.

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. I get a lot of the mitzvahs, weddings. Actually, there was once, so the first five or six years, nobody knew what I looked like. Nobody knew what, nobody knew about this punim. They had no idea. And so there were a lot of Ali G impersonators. And I had, one guy once came up to me in a club, and he goes, "Listen, I..." I go, "You look like me." He goes, "I am an Ali G impersonator." He goes, "But everyone thinks I'm Ali G. They don't know, it's not you." And he goes, "I do all the gangsters in England." And I go, "What?" He goes, "Yeah, I do the crazes, I do all the mafia."

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  So this guy was performing to the English mafia.

• 1:02:02Josh Horowitz?

  Sure.

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  I go, "This seems like a very bad idea." He goes, "They love you, they love you." I go, "No, they love you."

• 1:02:09Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  "Please do not piss them off."

• 1:02:14Josh Horowitz?

  So looking ahead, we, we know you're gonna be in the West End next year. I'm gonna come in month six of Pop and Jade, because I really want to see you.

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  I will probably not have ears by that time. I will have the tiniest nose. Sasha.

• 1:02:28Josh Horowitz?

  Are you going to be?

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  Unconventionally, someone knows you have. I'm not gonna make any racial stereotypes.

• 1:02:32Josh Horowitz?

  No, no, no.

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  For the Jews out there.

• 1:02:34Josh Horowitz?

  Yep. That makes an assumption there are any Jews out there, we have no idea.

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:02:39Josh Horowitz?

  Are you gonna be?

• 1:02:39Speaker 01

  We know.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  We know, there's some real Jews, oh my god, this guy here. Like a tall Josh Gad. Safade, safade.

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  This guy asleep or just? No, no, no, just in the morning. Nice to see you. You enjoying yourself?

• 1:03:08Speaker 01

  Not really. Come see.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  Well, hello.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  I love you.

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  Very little.

• 1:03:17Josh Horowitz?

  The beginning of your bad work special. It's exciting. Um, am I gonna see Mephisto again? There are some, as a nerd, I hear Ghost Rider that you might return.

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  I have no idea. I actually don't know.

• 1:03:30Speaker 01

  I don't.

• 1:03:31Josh Horowitz?

  Okay, all right, we'll see. We end every Happy Sec Confused with profoundly random questions, Sasha. You ready?

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  Please, please.

• 1:03:38Josh Horowitz?

  Uh, dogs or cats?

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  I grew up with cats.

• 1:03:43Josh Horowitz?

  Give it up for cats.

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  I had a, I had a cat called Tiger. I grew up from the age of two with Tiger. One time I came back from university and my late father said, he goes, are you upset about Tiger? I go, what? I'm the Tiger. He goes, you know.

• 1:03:59Josh Horowitz?

  Uh oh.

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  That he's dead. That we put him down. I go, no one told me that you put down my, you know, my cat that I've been with from the age of two.

• 1:04:09Josh Horowitz?

  What a way to find out.

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

  It was, I found out, yeah. It was harsh but fair.

• 1:04:14Josh Horowitz?

  Uh, what do you collect?

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  I used to collect stamps as a child.

• 1:04:19Josh Horowitz?

  Really?

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  Um, I don't know why. I thought they'd be a fantastic investment and I actually, I put them into ChatGPT and they're, you know, I used to get these first date covers. And the first date cover, you know, you'd have like thirty five p, twenty five p, you know, the grand total would be about a pound. They're worth about a pound twelve now. It was the worst investment ever.

• 1:04:39Josh Horowitz?

  Just be patient. They're gonna go up. Uh, favorite video game of all time?

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  Call of Duty.

• 1:04:49Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:50Speaker 01

  Bizarrely, I got into on the first Ali G show. And I, the graphics were terrible, but I got very into it. It was very good to distract me. But I'm aware of the fact that it incites violence and I don't play it now. I had to lock away my Playstation.

• 1:05:06Josh Horowitz?

  Dakota Johnson asked me this. I ask everybody, would you rather have a mouthful of bees or one bee in your butt?

• 1:05:13Speaker 01

  Say that again? Sorry, there were a lot of things.

• 1:05:16Josh Horowitz?

  A lot, a lot happened there. Would you rather have a mouthful of bees or one singular bee in your butt?

• 1:05:26Speaker 01

  Mouthful of bees. A bee in my butt?

• 1:05:29Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah, that's.

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  Uh, you get stung once?

• 1:05:32Josh Horowitz?

  It's like the easiest day on a Sasha Baron Cohen set, I feel like. That's nothing.

• 1:05:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, beer, yeah. Mouth, an ass full of bees.

• 1:05:41Josh Horowitz?

  Now you're talking.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  Both.

• 1:05:47Josh Horowitz?

  What's the wallpaper on your phone?

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  The wallpaper on my phone is, I'm not telling you.

• 1:05:57Josh Horowitz?

  Wow, look at that. They hit pavement.

• 1:05:59Speaker 01

  Mysterious.

• 1:06:00Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah, man a mystery.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  Picture of him, the guy in the mouth. He's not really having a good time. What do you think? Good time, thumbs up, thumbs down, or average?

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, thumbs up.

• 1:06:10Josh Horowitz?

  Oh, hey!

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  Show yourself. Stand up, stand up, if you don't mind. Thank you, thank you. I want you to have a good time. I actually want everyone to have a good time.

• 1:06:21Josh Horowitz?

  We're gonna get to each and every one of you tonight before.

• 1:06:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wanted to have a good time. I'm glad you're having a good time.

• 1:06:26Josh Horowitz?

  Who's the last actor you were mistaken for? Does it ever happen?

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  Last actor? I used to be mistaken for, um, Pete Sampras, the tennis player.

• 1:06:37Josh Horowitz?

  Really?

• 1:06:39Speaker 01

  I've had David Blaine.

• 1:06:40Josh Horowitz?

  Sure.

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  Um, and most Jews, yeah. Actually, a lot of people, wherever I am in the world, other than England, say, oh my God, you look exactly like my cousin. And for a while, before there was the realization that we had to cast people from their ethnicities in their ethnicity, for a while in Hollywood, every role that was non-American, I was offered. So there was a Mexican character in a comedy. They would come to me, you know, French character, but anyone who was not traditionally.

• 1:07:14Josh Horowitz?

  Just ambiguous, ambiguous.

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  Ambiguous.

• 1:07:17Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah, yeah. Um, worst noted director has ever given you?

• 1:07:25Speaker 01

  Worst note. I've basically worked with great directors.

• 1:07:30Josh Horowitz?

  This is the thing. If you look at that list, it's hard.

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  Worst note.

• 1:07:34Josh Horowitz?

  It could also just be in general. It's not helpful.

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  Oh, I did do, I did a TV show and this was with Alfonso Cuarón. And I'm acting with my son and my son is in a coma. He is in a lifeless coma. And at the end of the scene, Cuarón goes up to the guy who's been in a coma the whole scene and said, you did a great job, looks at me and walks off.

• 1:08:05Josh Horowitz?

  Was that purposeful, we think? We think he was?

• 1:08:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:08:08Josh Horowitz?

  Wow, harsh. And finally.

• 1:08:11Speaker 01

  Oh, disclaimer, it's actually an interesting little show.

• 1:08:12Josh Horowitz?

  Good show. Key plan shut, yeah. Um, in the spirit of Happy Sec Confused, finally, who's an actor who always makes you happy? You see them on screen, you're in a better mood.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  You know what? It was Danny Kaye. So I, I love Danny Kaye. Who here knows Danny Kaye?

• 1:08:28Speaker 01

  Jewish boy, gay, apparently had an affair with Laurence Olivier.

• 1:08:32Josh Horowitz?

  I know that, okay.

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  Um, I saw him when I was eight years old. I came to DC, my dad, there was some conference and somehow Danny Kaye was there. He was my favorite actor and I saw him on stage and I just loved him. The tongue twisters, he was hilarious, he sang, he was gay, yeah, in every way. He was, yeah, he was wonderful. So he was my favorite one. And then, you know, the other guy who made me happy. You okay?

• 1:09:07Josh Horowitz?

  Big Danny Kaye fan.

• 1:09:08Speaker 01

  Uh, Gary Shandling, the late Gary Shandling. Who I love and Gary, I love you, man, but he was my mentor when I came to Hollywood. He helped with all the movies. He actually saved Borat, the movie, because he used to have a basketball game. Borat was being shut down. I was working with another director who almost got me put in hospital. He ended up quitting, stroke, being fired and the studio Fox said, you got three weeks to get this movie up and running or we're done. I was this, you know, and basically I went to play at Gary Shandling's basketball game.

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  The basketball game that Gary Shandling had had Adam Sandler in, it had Will Ferrell, Adam McKay was there, David Duchovny. It was incredible. And we weren't allowed to talk about it at the time. But he's dead now, so I'll tell you about it. And, um,

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  sorry, Gary, sorry, Gary.

• 1:10:09Josh Horowitz?

  He'd appreciate it.

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  And basically I go up, I've got three weeks to get Borat up again, get a new director. And there was no script, no story. There really wasn't. So it seemed impossible. It was impossible. And basically I go, he's marking me and I go for a, go for a basket. I land and I land on his foot. I roll my foot and I hear the popping noise of two tendons, are they tendons, popping? And it was the best thing that happened because suddenly insurance kicked in and for three months I was on crutches. And in that time, we wrote a story and we hired Larry Charles.

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  And we ended up making a movie that I'm very proud of.

• 1:10:56Josh Horowitz?

  Wow.

• 1:10:59Speaker 01

  So thank you, Gary. We love you. And there are so many comedians out there who are indebted to him. Adam McKay, Sarah Silverman, Judd Apatow. That guy never wanted a credit. He wanted to increase the piece. He just wanted to give love and help all of us. He would come, helping the edits, be there for every screening, be there for every read through. He was an incredible man, an incredible guy, so.

• 1:11:24Josh Horowitz?

  I've always wondered, and maybe now is not the time, that, that story with that very prominent director that almost directed, that was directing your film, anything more you wanna say with what happened?

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  No, because I wanna increase the piece.

• 1:11:37Josh Horowitz?

  Okay, fair enough, fair enough.

• 1:11:38Speaker 01

  But.

• 1:11:39Josh Horowitz?

  You can look it up.

• 1:11:39Speaker 01

  Offstage, our.

• 1:11:41Josh Horowitz?

  We'll talk, we'll talk. Uh, movie that makes you sad?

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  I think Kramer versus Kramer.

• 1:11:50Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  First time I saw that, man, I was crying.

• 1:11:53Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:54Speaker 01

  I was going out with a girl whose parents were divorced and I suddenly understood how it's like, "Parents are divorced." I saw it again recently and oh, Jesus, Dustin Hoffman is what an incredible actor. I mean, it's like, you've got to watch it again. That and Tootsie, I watched recently. Tootsie's amazing. He's unbelievable, you know? Yeah. He really is unbelievable. Just the reality of it and the emotion. And that's why I used to love also Robin Williams, that ability to... Not a Jew, but he could do the voice.

• 1:12:29Josh Horowitz?

  He was honorary, yeah.

• 1:12:30Speaker 01

  Oh my God, that ability to make you laugh and then pull your kishkas and make you cry. That was something that I found so inspiring and I loved doing it. You said, "Have I ever done stage?" Never in the West End, but when I was in university, my speciality was I did Fiddler on the Roof and Serrano de Bergerac. And both of those movies are tragedy comedies. The character's hilarious in the first half and then something awful happens. In Serrano de Bergerac, he dies and the audience just can't handle it because they're laughing and they love him and then you kill him. And it's the same in Fiddler on the Roof. You, he goes through the hardest things that a father can go through, you know?

• 1:13:15Speaker 01

  "If I bend to fall, I will break." "If I were a rich man..."

• 1:13:27Speaker 01

  Okay, slightly out of tune. All right.

• 1:13:28Josh Horowitz?

  Pretty good, pretty good.

• 1:13:30Speaker 01

  But yeah, awesome Fiddler on the Roof. He is, he, you know, goes through, you know, you love him and then everyone starts crying. And I love that genre, tragedy comedy.

• 1:13:42Josh Horowitz?

  And finally, most importantly, a food that makes you confused, Sasha. You don't get it. Why do people eat that?

• 1:13:48Speaker 01

  I don't really understand chewing gum.

• 1:13:50Josh Horowitz?

  Oh.

• 1:13:50Speaker 01

  I don't get it.

• 1:13:51Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:52Speaker 01

  I don't really understand it. I don't see why people... Thank you for clapping.

• 1:13:55Josh Horowitz?

  We have some supporters.

• 1:13:56Speaker 01

  Some people, I thought I was, you agree with that. It's odd. What is it? Are people trying to exercise their jaws?

• 1:14:03Josh Horowitz?

  Right.

• 1:14:03Speaker 01

  Get rid of double chins? It doesn't work because I've tried.

• 1:14:06Josh Horowitz?

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:14:07Speaker 01

  I find it odd and you end up sticking it underneath things.

• 1:14:10Josh Horowitz?

  We've learned a lot tonight, don't you think?

• 1:14:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:13Josh Horowitz?

  Sasha.

• 1:14:16Josh Horowitz?

  He is, I said it before, I'll say it again. You are one of one. Nobody does it like you. Congratulations on the new film. You guys don't even know what this guy has done.

• 1:14:27Speaker 01

  Please, please go and see it on Friday and Saturday night. It's in the theaters for one weekend only, but I want you to see it with people around you because you know, look at the enjoyable experience we have being in a room together.

• 1:14:40Josh Horowitz?

  It's science. It's funny. We know for a fact it's funny.

• 1:14:43Speaker 01

  It is funny 100%. It will make you think.

• 1:14:47Josh Horowitz?

  Absolutely.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  And be in a room and enjoy yourselves together, please.

• 1:14:50Josh Horowitz?

  Thank you for doing what you do. Give it up one more time. Sasha Berry.

• 1:14:53Speaker 01

  Thank you, everyone.

• 1:15:10Speaker 05

  And so ends another edition of Happy, Sad, Confused. Remember to review, rate, and subscribe to this show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm a big podcast person. I'm Daisy Ridley and I definitely wasn't pressured to do this by Josh.

• 1:15:27Speaker 04

  There are vampires out there. They walk among you, shoulder to shoulder, in the dark. Heading to work, heading home, going to the bar. It's a life just like anyone else's, and I have grown used to it. To the darkness, to the moon, to the taste of blood on my tongue. But vampires are dying out. We are a fading kind, and I am the first one created in so long. And that is a dangerous thing to be. Those who came before me, elders of all stripes, they do not want to see our kind gone. And they will do anything to keep their power. And for myself, and for Grace who created me, that is a sword that hangs above our heads. And the worst person of all carries our secret. And he will use it however he sees fit.

• 1:16:11Speaker 04

  Who do you look to when things are at their darkest? From the creators of Parkdale Haunt comes Woodbine, a podcast about monsters, dreams, and changes, those you want and those you never saw coming. The final season begins this fall, distributed by Realm.