Sacha Baron Cohen wasn’t supposed to be Ali G at this year’s Oscars.
Sacha Baron Cohen was supposed to present Room’s nomination for Best Picture as himself, and not as any of his offensive alter personalities. But if Cohen is given an inch, you better believe he’s going to straight to the damn moon. Rather than accept the restriction placed on him by Oscar producers, he faked having food poisoning and spent 40 minutes turning into Ali G before going on stage.
“The Oscars sat me down beforehand and said they didn’t want me to do anything out of order; they wanted me to actually just present it as myself,”he told Good Morning Britain. “But luckily my wife put on the Ali G beard in the disabled toilets and I managed to get away with it. What would I do without her?”
As for why the people running the Oscars wouldn’t want Ali G or Borat or his latest character Grimsby, it’s probably because they didn’t want any unpredictable visual gags or offensive jokes thrown out by the comedian. And while he didn’t pull down his pants or try to sexually assault anyone, Sacha Baron Cohen did take things a little too far with many people going on Twitter calling him ‘racist’ and ‘offensive’.
“How come there’s no Oscar for them very hard-working little yellow people with the tiny dicks?” he asked, drawing gasps from the audience before continuing. “You know, the Minions.”
“I was a bit worried how they’d react to the first gag,” he admitted the next day on Good Morning Britain. “But I bumped into Chris Rock on the way on and pitched him the gig and he gave me the thumbs up, so I went for it.”
But, it’s important to point out that Chrisk Rock may not be the best person to ask, considering he did an Asian joke later in the night the flopped horribly. In fact, people went on Twitter to voice their outrage with racism against Asian-Americans.
Watch Sacha Baron Cohen as Ali G at the 2016 Oscars right here.
