You’ve probably heard by now but ‘Ali G’ was never supposed to be a presenter at this year’s Academy Awards. The Academy wanted Sacha Baron Cohen, not one of his characters, and they made that very clear when asking Sacha Baron Cohen to present an award with Olivia Wilde.
If you watched The Oscars this year you know that The Academy didn’t get their way, and Ali G made an appearance on stage with the first line being extremely racially charged on a year when ‘race’ was the #1 topic.
So Sacha Baron Cohen went on The Howard Stern Show to talk about the events that led up Ali G‘s appearance at The Oscars, and how it was Dave Chappelle who gave Sacha Baron Cohen the green light that led to him getting on stage and leading off with one of the most racially charged jokes of the night:
I wouldn’t say that I’m the biggest Sacha Baron Cohen fan around, but that’s probably because I never see enough of him being candid like this. It’s hard to be a huge fan of an actor when that actor’s going through life pretending to be 4 or 5 different people. I’m a big fan of the Ali G character, Bruno, and Borat. I’ve even got pretty high hopes for the upcoming Brothers Grimsby, I’m convinced this might actually be his best movie in years, but I do like to see Sacha Baron Cohen as himself from time to time.
Without knowing the man himself it’s hard to know when he’s dicking around, so it’s cool to see interviews like this and see that he still gets nervous as hell before some of those things leave his mouth.