Sacha Baron Cohen Says Playing Borat Is "Too Dangerous," So He Won't Do It Again

As he has said before, Sacha Baron Cohen is finished with the Borat character. He told Entertainment Weekly that the 2020 sequel would be his last because filming the movies got "too dangerous" due to the stunts he was pulling and the risks he was taking.

"It got too dangerous," he said. "There were a couple of times I had to put on a bulletproof vest to go and shoot a scene, and you don't want to do that too many times in your life. I was pretty lucky to get out this time, so no, I'm not doing it again. I'm going to stay with the scripted stuff."

Also in the interview, Baron Cohen spoke about the challenging nature of filming the Borat movies, which required him to fully immerse himself in the character while also keeping a section of his brain available to make notes for the production of the film.

"You can be physically assaulted. You can even be shot," he said "I never broke character thought internally, and this is an old thing to talk about since I've never talked about it, is that mentally, while I'm still fully in character to the person that I'm with, I mentally taking notes of things that are useful for the movie. Like a good poker player, you can never reveal to your opponents that what they've said is significant or in any way shocking. Otherwise they're not going to feel comfortable enough to reveal anything else."

"There were two things going on. There's the outward impression to the people around me and then there's what is going on inside my brain."

Back in January, Baron Cohen spoke about how he was "fairly traumatized" after filming the 2009 comedy Bruno and he thought he was done playing undercover characters. But he came back to make the Borat sequel because he believed that "democracy was in peril." He wanted people to see the movie and decide to not vote for Trump.

"I brought Borat out because of Trump," he said. "There was a purpose to this movie, and I don't really see the purpose to doing it again. So yeah, he's locked away in the cupboard."

While Baron Cohen might not bring back Borat for a third movie, actress Maria Bakalova, who played Borat's daughter Tutar in the sequel, has said she would be up for reprising her character.