Borat: Sacha Baron Cohen explains how he almost pranked the My Pillow Guy

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Sacha Baron Cohen's latest testament to undercover comedy, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, might have given us one of Rudolph Giuliani’s most embarrassing moments of 2020, but at one time the comedian also had plans for another target, Michael J. Lindell, aka the "My Pillow Guy." Everyone knows that a well-laid plan comes with backup preparations, and so it was that a contingency plot to target Lindell was conceived.

During the making of the film, creatives considered inviting Lindell to a one-on-one interview with Tutar, the daughter of Borat who is played by Maria Bakalova.

“We had this crazy idea to do a socially distanced interview with Mike Lindell and Borat’s daughter, and since we couldn’t do it indoors, we’d do it in the edge of the woods or some kind of wasteland,” says Anthony Hines, the producer, and co-writer of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. “There would be a mattress there with a load of MyPillow products and Borat would find Mike Lindell at the edge of the woods in a bed with his daughter. The MyPillow guy would then have to explain what the hell was going on. That was just one harebrained alternative to the scene that ended up in the movie.”

Hines also attests that Team Borat had plenty of options when looking to target members from Trump's inner circle.

“In sort of like a crazy pipe dream world, Giuliani would have been Donald Trump,” says Hines. “But we had 20 to 30 people in the Trump universe that could have been the subject of that interview, and with the possible exception of Trump himself, Giuliani was the one we wanted the most.”

Unfortunately for Giuliani, his hand-in-the-pants interview was a highlight of the secretly-filmed sequel. The scene in question involves Giuliani being interviewed by Tutar, privately, inside a hotel room. During the exchange, Giuliani is seen flirting with the young woman and asks for her contact information. Shortly thereafter, he lies down on a bed and puts his hand down his pants. Giuliani claims that at the time he was tucking his shirt in after taking off a microphone, but members of the Borat cast strongly disagree. The salacious scene quickly became fodder for meme lords the world over, for obvious reasons.

Recently while talking about his life and career with Variety, Baron Cohen opened up about the making of his Borat sequel, and how much of its success depended on luck, of all things.

“This is an absurd movie to write down,” says Baron Cohen. “The screenplay for this was ludicrous. We had a table read where we got comedy friends and wrote in lines for the real people with what we hoped they would say. [Our friends] said, ‘This is great but it’s obviously impossible to make. You’re going to end with Rudy Giuliani or Don Jr. and Borat’s daughter goes to sleep with them and Borat runs in to save her. This is an impossible movie to make.'”

What do you think of Baron Cohen's alternate plan for Lindell? Would it have been as funny of damning if he were forced to shoot that scene instead of Giuliani's? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.