Sacha Baron Cohen tells Stephen Colbert that Giuliani scene was even creepier than you thought

“Who?,” Sacha Baron Cohen deadpanned when Stephen Colbert segued into discussing the most talked about scene in Baron Cohen’s long-belated Borat sequel, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery Of Prodigious Bribe To American Regime For Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan. Of course, Baron Cohen knows full well who Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, current Russian asset, and lawyer to the president is, what with Donald Trump rushing to the defense of his most loyal lackey by calling the British comedian both a “creep” and “phony.” “Yes, I am a professional phony, just like him,” admitted the world-renowned impersonator and improviser, conceding innocently that he’s sure that when Trump was “hanging out with his good friend Jeffrey Epstein,” the thoroughly accused sexual predator and president “spent a lot of their time talking about how creepy I am.”

After doing the late-night rounds in character last week (intimately probing Jimmy Kimmel with a responsibly long probing stick), Baron Cohen was his unassuming self via video chat with Colbert, as ever provoking cultural dissonance by seeming like a perfectly reasonable and regular guy. His onscreen alter ego, meanwhile, was shown being chased offstage by “U! S! A!”-chanting gun nuts in a deleted Subsequent Moviefilm scene. Apparently, one of Baron Cohen’s brave security people was able to talk one trigger-happy dupe into putting his proffered murder-piece away by telling the furious fellow, “It’s not worth it, buddy.”

But back to Rudy who—spoiler alert for anyone living under rocks with bad wifi—is seen in the film reclining with a whiskey and his hand down his pants in a hotel room with actress Maria Bakalova, who’s playing Borat’s 15-year-old daughter, Tutar. As Baron Cohen (who was hiding in a specially rigged wardrobe hidey-hole in the hotel room while the 76-year-old presidential attorney allegedly fiddled himself in preparation for doing something with an actor posing as a teenager) told Colbert, the reality of the situation is even, to steal a word from Rudy’s boss, creepier. Noting that Giuliani had his former cop bodyguard do a security sweep of the room and then sit directly outside the door “ensuring that no one could come in and out,” Baron Cohen intimated that this is a well-practiced routine for Rudy. “Which is actually even more scary when you think about it,” Baron Cohen told Colbert in reference to the idea of a wealthy, well-connected old man with a private security force barricading him in a hotel room with what he thinks is a teenage girl.

As for all the usual bluster from Giuliani, Trump, and sweaty right-wing enablers and apologists everywhere that a) Rudy totally wasn’t fooled, and b) that the Nosferatu-like Trump associate with a long history of sexual improprieties, misogyny, and cousin-wedding was just sinking back on a hotel bed in order to tuck in his shirt in the presence of a seemingly pliant teen, Baron Cohen drily demurred. “If he sees that as appropriate, heaven knows what he’s intended to do with other women in hotel rooms,” he said, before praising Bakalova for matching (and even surpassing) Baron Cohen’s own dedication and skill when it comes to catching people with their pants down. (Sometimes, although not in this case, metaphorically.) “If she doesn’t win an Oscar,” Baron Cohen said of the 24-year-old Bulgarian actress, “then I don’t know what the Academy is for.” Baron Cohen—currently pulling a home box office double-whammy as similarly prankish activist Abbie Hoffman in Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial Of The Chicago 7—also refuted any talk that Trump himself was smart enough to see through one of the comic’s famous guises when then-just-bankrupted casino mogul was interviewed by Ali G. “He completely believed that Ali G was real,” said Baron Cohen of the interview, noting that Trump was only pissed off that he had to talk to “somebody from a lower class.”