Forget Borat and Bruno, Ali G is set to make a return
Boyakasha! Ali G creator Sasha Baron Cohen has confirmed his satirical chav turned TV talk show host character is returning.
The comedian performed as Ali G during a live stand-up show in Sydney, Australia, this past June, and has confirmed to GQ he has hopes for the character’s future.
“I just wanted to get on stage and muck around and see what Ali G would be like with a crowd. It was really good fun,” he said.
Asked if he would bring Ali G back in a bigger way, the comedian said: “Yes, I think I would. The reason I became a comedian was that I loved people laughing at my jokes.
“To actually hear laughter is a rare thing for me. When I do the movies, I have to wait three months to hear an audience laugh.”
Baron Cohen made his name with Ali G in the late 1990s when the character began making appearances on cult Channel 4 show The 11’O Clock Show.
By 2000 he was given his own stand-alone TV show, Da Ali G Show, on Channel 4, where the presenter interviewed celebrities and politicians, some of whom didn’t know Ali was a made-up character.
He has a number of infamous interviews behind him, including a piece with David and Victoria Beckham where Ali G asked Victoria whether she enjoys anal sex and where she conceived her son, Brooklyn.
Baron Cohen also famously interviewed Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, and asked him about how he felt about being the first man to do the moonwalk rather than Michael Jackson.
Baron Cohen officially retired Ali G in 2007, but has made a handful of performances in the years since, including at the 2012 British Comedy Awards.
Baron Cohen has also created Borat and Bruno, two other fictional comedy characters with their own universes which have been spun out into their own feature films.
Borat 2 was released in October 2020 to collide with the US presidential election – but the comedian has said he has no further plans to reprise that particular character.
“I was scared for the rest of the world because I knew that if – I felt that if democracy was completely dismantled in America, then other democracies around the world would follow suit, and other authoritarian leaders would do the same,” the comedian told NPR’s Fresh Air.
“And I felt I had to take a stand. So no, I can’t do this again. Firstly, just practically, at some point, your luck runs out.”
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