The FBI Tailed Sacha Baron Cohen While He Made ‘Borat’

Whether the project is Borat, Brüno or Da Ali G Show, “you get addicted to the adrenaline,” Sacha Baron Cohen told Marc Maron on his WTF podcast in 2016. “Once you beat the cops once, you go, ‘All right, great! Let’s do the next one!’ What can we do now? Then you beat the FBI.”

When Cohen talked about beating the FBI, he was referring to getting access to FBI agents on Da Ali G Show. 

But that wasn’t Cohen’s last encounter with the feds. “On Borat, the FBI started following us,” he told Maron. “They got so many complaints that there was a terrorist traveling in an ice cream van.”

“That’s interesting because that’s weird backstory. That really adds to the message of the movie,” Maron said. “They were that paranoid, that of course the terrorist would be a little fat guy and this guy with an ice cream truck.”

So many people complained to the FBI, Cohen revealed, that the agency started compiling a file on the production. “Eventually, they came to visit us at the hotel, and I obviously went missing when I heard. They’re like, ‘FBI’s downstairs! Sasha, disappear!’ You don’t want me to be apprehended.”

Cohen had a habit of staying in his Borat character when confronted by authorities. Unfortunately, in Sedona, Arizona, “we didn’t really have our shit together and we didn’t know the law well enough.” In the bit, Borat visited a psychic masseuse, and while the guy was doing his New Age chanting, Borat simulated masturbating under the sheet. The guru got angry and called the cops. Cohen hightailed it out of there fast, but when cops pulled him out of a car, he responded as Borat. “I was touching my chrum,” he confessed, simulating a swift hand gesture near his crotch. 

Wrong answer. 

The Borat crew turned over video to prove it was all in the name of comedy — another wrong move. When Cohen and company consulted their lawyer, they learned simulating self-pleasure was a crime in Arizona, punishable by two years in prison. And they’d just turned over the evidence. The lawyer’s advice: “Get on a plane right now” and leave Arizona. (The Borat crew beat the rap.)

Cohen’s instinct to see how far he could push law enforcement didn’t earn him any favors with lawyers. “Their knee-jerk reaction has been, ‘It’s illegal. We can’t do that. Impossible.’”

Of course attorneys would say that, reasoned Maron. When in doubt, err on the side of “don’t do it.”

The aim of lawyers isn’t to say what’s legal, explained Cohen, it’s to prevent studios from getting sued. But that strategy isn’t always the most profitable.

“On Borat, we ended up getting sued 150 times, but it ended up being very beneficial for Fox,” Cohen boasted of his comedy that made $262 million worldwide on a budget of $18 million. “We were all right. We knew we were on the right side of the law.”