Sacha Baron Cohen is bringing his signature(?) character of Borat Sagdiyev back to what passes for theaters these days (it premieres on Amazon Prime on October 23), with a trailer promising there are still some people in America who aren’t in on the scabrously revealing joke. Appearing on Monday’s Jimmy Kimmel Live, Baron Cohen—scrupulously in character—promoted Borat’s second cinematic trip to America (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan), successfully showing that he’s able to make even knowing talk show hosts very uncomfortable with Borat’s intentionally provocative schtick.
Of course, Borat’s got help this time. The plot of the sequel (as far as the secretive Baron Cohen has allowed us to glean) sees the Kazakh journalist on another cross-country trip, this time intended to present his teen daughter to Vice President Mike Pence as a “gift.” In keeping with his tradition of enlisting unknown but very, very game second-bananas, said daughter is played by an unknown. In that, literally, nobody really knows who the actress is at this point. Internet rumors are making the pretty convincing case that the “Irina Nowak” sketchily credited as the film’s co-lead is actually young Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova, but it’s genuinely up in the air at this point, along with much detail of just which Americans Baron Cohen will be outing for their not-so-hidden racism and all-American awfulness with Borat’s bigot-baiting antics.
And Bakalova (if, that is, indeed, her) showed that she’s fully prepared to be the next Azamat Bagatov/Ken Davitian, as daughter Tutar (if Borat’s accent is to be deciphered thus) had even her fearlessly forthright father encouraging Kimmel to just give the smiling but hair-trigger furious young woman anything she wants. “She is very good thief!,” said Borat proudly, urging Kimmel to not react to Tutar having stolen a framed picture of Kimmel and Jennifer Aniston off of the wall, “And she very violent!” (“Teenagers!,” Borat explained of his offspring’s proud claim of having murdered 17 dogs.) And the girl didn’t stop there, finally outdoing her dad’s initial prop comedy provocations (including smashing the corona-“veerus” with a frying pan and probing a nervously giggling Kimmel with a series of decidedly unsanitary-looking probes) by flying into a crazy-eyed rage when Kimmel wouldn’t give her his show-pants. (ABC’s pixilating technicians got a workout all segment, not just in covering up Borat’s bare ass at one point, but also he contents of several specimen jars, supposedly obtained from appearances with more forthcoming talk show hosts.) Kimmel eventually conceded, getting what looked to be genuinely annoyed at having to strip his mic pack out of his trousers before dutifully handing them over.
As for Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, the clip Baron Cohen brought along showed a bearded Borat and his daughter exposing one of those misleadingly advertised evangelical “women’s health centers” that try to trick women seeking abortions, which showed, once more, that sometimes it takes a grossly anti-Semitic Eastern European stereotype or two to similar sucker Americans into revealing just who they are. According to entertainment sleuthing, in addition to stated target Pence, Borat and his daughter also sucked in Trump henchman Rudy Giuliani, gun nuts, Southern debutantes, internet conspiracy theorists, and CPAC, in addition to taking a dump on Trump Tower and courting the requisite Baron Cohen prank movie lawsuits.