News > Baron Cohen Retires Borat, Ali G

Written by David Morgan

Sacha Baron Cohen, has resolved that he will not play two of his signature characters ever again, namely the clueless rapper-interviewer Ali G and the backwards Kazakh journalist Borat Sagdiyev. Variety reports that Baron Cohen talked to British newspapers last week on the subject:

When I was being Ali G and Borat I was in character sometimes 14 hours a day and I came to love them, so admitting I am never going to play them again is quite a sad thing.

It is like saying goodbye to a loved one. It is hard, and the problem with success, although it's fantastic, is that every new person who sees the Borat movie is one less person I “get' with Borat again, so it's a kind of self-defeating form, really.

It's much easier for me to be in character and it's a lot more fun. If I'd done the entire promotional campaign for (the Borat movie) as myself it wouldn't have developed in the same way.

This announcement has been practically expected for the past year but now it's official. Ali G and Borat are "dead." But Baron Cohen himself is of coursenot and can be seen in Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd. I bet Sacha Baron Cohen's therapist asks these questions a lot: "And why do you find it 'easier to be in character' rather than yourself? What's wrong with just being Sacha?"