Sacha Baron Cohen has revealed how Joe Biden’s administration reacted to Borat 2’s Rudy Giuliani scandal.
In what has become the film’s most famous scene, Giuliani, the personal lawyer of Donald Trump, is shown in what appears to be a compromising position after taking Borat’s daughter, Tutar (Maria Bakalova), to his hotel bedroom “for a drink” after she interviews him. He believes she is a conservative TV host.
At one stage, he is shown lying on the bed with what appears to be his hand down his trousers, which caused a media firestorm around the time of the film’s release in September.
As part of the prank, Borat then bursts into the room shouting: “She’s 15 – she’s too old for you!”
Giuliani went on to accuse the Borat star of being a “stone-cold liar” for implying the image from the film showed anything other than him simply “tucking in his shirt”.
The former mayor of New York responded on Twitter after the screenshot went viral. “The Borat video is a complete fabrication," he wrote. "I was tucking in my shirt after taking off the recording equipment.”
READ MORE: Here’s how Sacha Baron Cohen’s prank victims feel about being tricked in Borat 2
According to Baron Cohen, though, the Biden administration were “very happy” with the footage – especially as the fallout occurred a month before the presidential election.
The actor told The Guardian: “Suddenly he was having to try to explain that he wasn’t playing with himself. It was such a close election that everything in those final weeks was crucial.”
At the time, Trump, who lost the election, stood by Giuliani and called Baron Cohen “a creep”.
The former president now seems to have distanced himself from Giuliani, with his senior adviser and spokesperson Jason Miller telling CNN that Giuliani is “not currently representing [him] in any legal matters”.
READ MORE: Sacha Baron Cohen calls Trump’s Twitter ban ‘most important moment in history of social media’
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
