Sacha Baron Cohen talks new Ali G film on TigerBelly

Sacha Baron Cohen sat down with Bobby Lee on TigerBelly 578 to talk about his new Ali G film, Who Iz I?, which he calls "the craziest film I've ever done." He says it is set in the real world with real people and contains scenes you have never seen before and will never see again.

Then he compared it to a superhero team up. "It's basically my version of the Avengers," Cohen said.

The release plan is strange on purpose

Cohen says the movie gets a tiny theatrical window and then moves to streaming. "We're doing just two days in the cinemas and then going straight to Amazon," he told Lee, putting those days on the 23rd and 24th.

He also explained why a cinema run matters to him at all. On the first Borat he says he got crazily detailed about making sure the laughter worked in a 300 seater cinema, which is why watching it at home now leaves long gaps where an audience used to be.

How the real people stuff still gets made

Cohen walked through the mechanics of fooling actual humans on camera. Prosthetics got good enough that he thought they might convince real people, so he built characters around them. He brought up Dr. Naira Kane, the ultra woke character from Who Is America, and the early Borat era routine where he went up to upper class fox hunting defenders as Alexi Krickler and told them that in his country they hunt criminals.

It does not always hold. Cohen says that after the Bernie Sanders interview, one of Sanders' team got suspicious and a phone call came in saying they thought it was Sacha Baron Cohen. He says he spent two weeks living in a DC Airbnb and only sneaking out at night.

Bobby Lee auditioned for Bruno

Lee's side of the episode is pure Lee. He says he first found Ali G while he was on Mad TV, living in a tiny Silverlake apartment with the flu, flipping on HBO and cackling through it. He also says he auditioned for Bruno, playing Cohen's boyfriend, and that he wore jean shorts to make the audition different.

The episode is titled Sacha Baron Cohen & The Fly Stunner, because Cohen demonstrates his technique for stunning flies with his bare hands. Lee's summary of why stand ups like him is that he is pure comedy and his game has always been elite.