After his wildly successful 2006 film, you’d think that Sacha Baron Cohen would give up the Borat character. He has to, right? The character only works when people don’t know who he is. And, after Borat, it seemed like everyone knew who he was.
But like a phoenix rising from the ashes, it looks like Borat is returning in one way or another. There is a video making the rounds online (mostly on TikTok but I don’t know how to embed that. I’m old.) of Cohen driving around the streets of LA, in character and being filmed. He’s obviously making something, whether it be a new episode of a series or a new Borat movie or maybe even just some short viral video. We don’t know what it is but it definitely involves everyone’s favorite Kazakh journalist. Take a watch:
Just saw a live shooting of Borat driving some yellow hooptie truck in my hood!!! 😂🙌🏾.... pic.twitter.com/NSDmrKgPPe
— Switzon S. Wigfall, III (SSWIII) (@switzonthegreat) August 17, 2020
Cohen’s Showtime series Who Is America? made some waves back in 2018 but the comedian swore up and down that it would just be one season. Maybe he was lying? Maybe he’s cooking up a new season of that series that’ll include Borat? That’s a possibility. Regardless of what it is, we don’t know anything about it and we won’t until Cohen wants us to. He is famously very tight-lipped about his work until it’s ready to be seen. But he has already popped up recently, in character, guiding a group of Americans in a racist sing-a-long and that was obviously also being filmed, the clip went viral. With that clip and now this new one of Borat riding around town, you can bet that something is on the horizon.
Cohen’s brand of comedy is always necessary and a public service. His characters have been called offensive, crude and racist and, well, they are. That’s the point. But his work has always been about exposing the racists and hate-mongers among us. He uses Borat and his other creations as a way to highlight the prejudice, hate and ignorance that runs rampant through our society. So, yes, I think a return of Borat at this time in our history is just what we need.