Sacha Baron Cohen joins GQ as he revisits some of the most iconic characters from his career so far: from his portrayal of fictional satirical characters Ali G, Borat Sagdiyev, Brüno Gehard and Admiral General Haffaz Aladeen, to Jean Girard in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.“I wasn’t a method actor, but I had no alternative but to appear like a Daniel Day-Lewis in the real world because I had to be prepared for anything,” says the English comedian and actor as he looks back on his time as Borat Sagdiyev. Watch the full episode of GQ’s Iconic Characters as Sacha Baron Cohen breaks down his most iconic movie roles.All episodes of Disclaimer are available to stream exclusively on Apple TV+.
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00:00In the movies that I've done, sometimes the crew really are risking violence or jail time or expulsion.
00:08Jokes aside, I mean, some of them have been in very difficult and potentially violent situations,
00:13so they have to really believe in the project.
00:21Ali G.
00:28Hello.
00:30The simple joke of Ali G. was take the most stupid person in the world and put them next to
00:35the world experts.
00:40What was it like not being the first man on the moon?
00:43Was you ever jealous of Louis Armstrong?
00:46He was Neil Armstrong.
00:47So I started with Philippe Golier, who is the legendary clown teacher.
00:52After I did Ali G., I went to him and I said, listen, you know, it's a clown character.
00:57Because Ali G. is incredibly stupid and incredibly ignorant.
01:03Ain't God just like an overhyped David Blaine?
01:08No, and a lot of people would find that suggestion very offensive.
01:12Yo, sorry.
01:13He's delusional, right? So when people are delusional, they can be really funny.
01:17And he said, no, because you're not a clown.
01:20He goes, it's bouffant.
01:21So I'd studied with him this genre of acting called bouffant, which is a
01:27sort of early form of satire.
01:30In medieval times, certain people who were seen as different or unacceptable would perform
01:35these plays called bouffant plays, where they would pretend to be people in authority.
01:40And the idea was, you know, you'd have this person with a huge deformity playing
01:45the king of France.
01:46The king of France would look at it and go, oh, it's not me.
01:48It's not me.
01:49It's not me.
01:50It's so upset that he'd have a heart attack.
01:52And so it had a certain hardness to it.
01:55It wasn't just sort of silly jokes to people in power.
01:59It had the aim to undermine those in power.
02:03I've got some business idea that I just want to tell you about.
02:06And I'll be a full lift very quickly.
02:08We went to Trump Towers.
02:10And he was, I remember waiting for him.
02:12He was the only guy who ever kept us waiting.
02:14Everyone else would be very punctual.
02:16And I would hear him go, you do this and that.
02:18He's screaming at someone.
02:19And it becomes clear that he's screaming at Giuliani when Giuliani was mayor.
02:24And so it's intimidating, right?
02:26You're quite scared.
02:26This guy comes in the room and starts speaking to the producer, thinking that he's the interviewer.
02:32And the producer is this handsome, blonde, posh guy who went to Oxford.
02:37And he goes, all right, let's start the interview.
02:38And then he goes, no, actually, you're interviewing this guy.
02:41And he looks at me as Ali G and immediately hates me.
02:47You know, incredibly disappointed, reluctant.
02:50Really, are you sure we don't?
02:51OK, fine.
02:52Let's get on with this.
02:53So he's ready to go the moment he saw me.
02:55What do you do in that moment?
02:56Where's your brain at?
02:57I'm like, yo, respect.
02:59Hey, big up yourself.
03:00What?
03:00How does that spell your name again?
03:03It's Trump, innit?
03:10So part of the job when you're undercover is you are trying to see what they are thinking.
03:17And in the real world, real people perform like bad actors, like soap actors, right?
03:23If they're suspicious, they look you up and down or they start squinting.
03:27And so you're reading the other person's face and actually their body language.
03:33And if there's multiple people, you're reading everyone in the room.
03:37So that's when it becomes really difficult.
03:38If you are doing an interview with six people, sometimes you can be in a room with 40 people
03:44where you are trying to see if there's anything going on.
03:47If somebody starts squinting their eyes and they're suspicious,
03:51they start looking at you, then you have to double down.
03:55This sounds absurd, but this is what's going on in my mind.
03:59You're trying to push over, push through their suspicion, push it down.
04:05The interesting one to look at early on is Tony Benn.
04:07Tony Benn was a socialist member of parliament.
04:10And he was the first person to challenge Ali G.
04:13When Ali G was talking about, you know, my bitches, he was like,
04:17wait a minute, you're talking about women in a derogatory way.
04:21But most of the time we want to chill.
04:22We want to hang with my bitches, whatever.
04:25We just want to relax.
04:26Women with a great deal of disrespect.
04:28You call them a bitch as if you were a dog.
04:30No, that ain't a term of disrespect.
04:32It is a term of disrespect, just like animals.
04:34You're calling them animals.
04:35Rather than pandering to the youth, he challenged Ali G.
04:38And he was very upset because he said, I didn't realize who he was.
04:43And then actually about six months later, he called me up and he said,
04:49I have to tell you, I want to thank you because I walked down the street
04:52and people want to talk to me about socialism.
04:55And young people haven't wanted to talk about socialism for 30 years.
05:01Borat.
05:09I like sits.
05:11It's nice.
05:12When I first started doing Borat, he was from Moldova.
05:16And I was doing it for the BBC.
05:19He was called Alexei Krikler.
05:22And in those days, I didn't really prepare anything.
05:26I was a one man band, you know, me and one cameraman.
05:29And I went to learn etiquette with some member of the royal family, lesser royal.
05:35And she brought me to some dinner.
05:37And they go, oh, I'm going to put you next to the Moldovan ambassador.
05:43And so they sat me next to the Moldovan ambassador.
05:46And I was pretending to be Moldovan.
05:48And I thought, how the hell do I get out of this?
05:50I go, he is a spy.
05:52He is a spy.
05:53Everybody, he is bugging this.
05:56And I realized it was him or me.
05:58And I think I managed to get him thrown out of the dinner.
06:00Yeah.
06:01So you got thrown out and then you managed to just continue as the only.
06:04Yeah, I think I managed to get him, people sort of suspect him rather than me.
06:19You know, I was experimenting with Borat.
06:20I ended up taking my trousers off and I had my actual underpants on.
06:25And I remember the person who I was with saying, hold on,
06:28why are you wearing those if you're from Kazakhstan?
06:31And it blew the whole scene.
06:33And at that point, I realized that I would have to be a complete person.
06:37You know, so it wasn't, I wasn't a method actor.
06:40But I had no other alternative but to appear like a, you know,
06:45Daniel Day-Lewis in the real world because I had to be prepared for anything.
06:49The moment they or anyone in their team meet this person, it has to be completely real.
06:55So that means when I do these performances,
06:58sometimes they can last up to many hours long and sometimes a few days long.
07:03In the last, in the second Borat movie, there was a scene that lasted three days.
07:07When I did Borat 2, Maria comes along and they said, OK, teach Maria how to do it.
07:14I didn't really realize there was a method and I never told it to anyone for,
07:18you know, 22 years.
07:20And suddenly I have to train up this, you know, brilliant young actor who's brilliant.
07:26But she goes, how do I do this?
07:28And so I taught her how to use the fear that adrenaline
07:33and that energy is going to make your performance really captivating on screen.
07:39And I think it's part of the reason why she's so alive and she's
07:43so vibrant on screen is because she's terrified.
07:46Her body is full of adrenaline.
07:57Teenagers.
08:00Please give it to me, daddy, give it to me, give it to me, give it to me.
08:04OK, cheesecake.
08:06And then you're both having to do this like thing that you rehearsed the previous night.
08:09What is that like?
08:10Talk me through the process of doing something like that.
08:12Well, we know what the scene is.
08:15You have to have great, we use the term complicity.
08:18That's what Philip Golia taught me is, you know, connection between the actors where
08:23we really enjoy watching them together and they understand each other.
08:26So, you know, before we go into the scene, I go, this is what it's basically going to be.
08:31I'm going to say this and it goes to that.
08:33And then if she's got the line wrong, I had a few cues that she knew.
08:37I would say, tissue, which would be like, be quiet now because, you know,
08:42because I would need, you know, you still need to make sure this is a good joke.
08:47And for a joke to really land, you've got to make sure nobody else is talking at that point.
08:52So we had like tissue, a few other things that would say, OK, start, stop.
08:56So you're kind of directing her in the moment.
08:59And then we knew the shape of the scene.
09:08We did a scene at a gun rally during COVID.
09:13There were a lot of submachine guns and semi-automatics.
09:18And there was a danger that somebody would, you know, get very angry,
09:23recognize me and potentially use one of their guns.
09:27So, you know, I wore a bulletproof vest for that one.
09:30I was singing this song called the Wuhan Flu.
09:33And it was really about the danger of another term with Donald Trump
09:40and whether American democracy would move to kind of authoritarianism
09:44and what he would do to his opponents
09:47and whether his supporters would agree with giving them the Wuhan Flu or,
09:52you know, killing them, essentially.
09:54We're in this kind of jail.
09:55What in the hell are you going to do with the Wuhan Flu?
09:58OK, journalists, are we going to inject them with the Wuhan Flu?
10:01And obviously playing on the xenophobia at the time
10:06and this sort of anti-Asian feeling.
10:09And then one person in the audience realized who I was.
10:13And then word started spreading that it was me.
10:16People started trying to storm the stage.
10:17But I had to finish the scene.
10:19Somebody pulled a gun and luckily I had a great guard
10:22who got the gun out of the guy's hand and got into the ambulance.
10:27The problem was then we were surrounded by all these guys
10:29with guns and semi-automatics.
10:31And I'm saying to the ambulance guy, go, go, go.
10:34He's not going.
10:35We're lying on the floor.
10:36One of the doors opens and they start trying to pull me out.
10:39It was actually just a whole lesson in physics.
10:41Because I was lying down, I got the leverage pulling the door back
10:48and I managed to be stronger just because of the pure science of it.
10:52Then all these guys trying to pull me out.
10:53And luckily, somebody from our side said,
10:55there's a guy in there who needs to get to hospital.
10:58I mean, I would have gone to hospital, but...
11:00And they let us go.
11:02Clinton, drink the blood of children.
11:04In Ballrat 2, I stay in a house with these two conspiracy theorists,
11:08Jim and Jerry.
11:08You know, and I think we all had preconceptions
11:11about what conspiracy theorists would be.
11:14These guys were actually lovely.
11:16They believed that Hillary was drinking the blood of children.
11:19But they also felt that they had to tell Ballrat
11:23that it's really important he loves his daughter.
11:25She can be a journalist and it's not right to give her as a gift to Giuliani.
11:29So they were human beings.
11:32And you realize from that, that actually the things that we're told,
11:36the information that we're given, or the misinformation that we're given,
11:39is crucial and it affects how you behave.
11:42So some people that we would dismiss as bad or immoral
11:45are actually just those who are misinformed.
11:48But then the onus is on those who are spreading the misinformation
11:51and the platforms who are allowing that.
11:56The dictator.
11:57There was a writing team called Berg, Schafer, Mandel.
12:01Alec Berg, Jeff Schafer and Dave Mandel,
12:03who all went on to do brilliant things.
12:06And they were working at Curb Your Enthusiasm.
12:08They came in to me and they pitched a few different movies.
12:12And one of them was this dictatorial movie
12:15that was about a man who was trying to get a job
12:18and he was trying to get a job and he was trying to get a job.
12:20And he was trying to get a job and he was trying to get a job.
12:23And he was trying to get a job and he was trying to get a job.
12:25And one of them was this dictator who has a double.
12:31And then suddenly I started improvising.
12:34You know, yeah, it's too pointy.
12:36You know, the missile is not pointy enough.
12:40It must be more pointy.
12:42How will it fly?
12:43It is too round on the top.
12:45It must be more pointy.
12:48It is too round on the top.
12:50It needs to be pointy.
12:51Round is not scary.
12:53Pointy is scary.
12:54It will put a smile on the faces of the enemy.
12:56They will think that it is a huge robot dildo flying towards them.
13:00And actually, apparently, Elon Musk saw the dictator
13:04and then insisted that one of his SpaceX rockets
13:08was more pointy to make it fly better.
13:11Actually, he was aware to make it fly slightly worse,
13:14but he thought it was a funny thing to do.
13:16So because I had to weigh in with this character
13:20of this all-powerful idiot,
13:22Jason Manzoukas, who was playing the nuclear scientist,
13:26was like, are you sure?
13:27You know, I don't think it really will fly without...
13:30It has to be pointy.
13:31Otherwise, you know.
13:33So once I've got way in with the voice,
13:36yeah, I'm kind of locked into the character
13:38and I can't do anything.
13:40While we're shooting the movie,
13:42you know, it's a movie about a dictator
13:44trying to stop his dictatorship turning into a democracy.
13:48And while we're shooting it, the Arab Spring occurs.
13:51The dictator was not Arabic,
13:54but the fact that the Arab Spring was going on
13:57and there were popular demonstrations
14:00against dictatorships,
14:02we, you know, questioned the end of the movie
14:05and is the ending that it's a dictatorship or a democracy?
14:09And we kind of thought it probably
14:12may not be successful, the Arab Spring.
14:16And so the end of the movie,
14:18it remains a kind of dictatorship,
14:20but with a pseudo-democracy.
14:22Talladega Nights.
14:25Even Diane Sawyer needed Katie Couric.
14:30Will you be my Katie Couric?
14:33Wow.
14:35I feel like I'm in Highlander.
14:39How did I get into it?
14:40I used to play basketball.
14:42Gary Shandling, the legendary comedian,
14:44had a basketball game for comedians.
14:47Will Ferrell would play there.
14:49Adam Sandler, Sarah Silverman, Adam McKay.
14:53And I would play there.
14:55And I got friendly with McKay and Will
14:58and they asked me to do this thing.
15:00I'd just come off Borat,
15:02the day before I was shooting Borat.
15:04And on the plane to the read-through,
15:07I thought, oh, I'm playing this French,
15:09gay, Formula One, Formula driver.
15:14What's this character?
15:15And I went, oh, my clown teacher, Philippe Golier.
15:18So I did the Philippe Golier.
15:20You know, the voice of Philippe Golier.
15:22You are terrible on stage.
15:25I always need a voice to get into,
15:28a silly voice to get into the character.
15:29I said to Adam McKay, I said,
15:31what happens if I kiss him at the end?
15:35And then I say, sir, you taste of America.
15:38And he goes, oh, I don't know.
15:40I go, you know, why don't we just try it?
15:42Let's see.
15:43Let's just, why not?
15:44What do we lose?
15:45It would take like 45 seconds.
15:47And we did it and it became the end of the movie.
15:54And we had about 1,000 people in the crowd
15:56at the time who were Nascar fans,
15:58who started booing, you know,
16:00I was kissing Will Ferrell, who they love.
16:04Bruno.
16:07I made a deal with the mother.
16:08And at this time, we're taking the child into protection.
16:17That is my baby.
16:19Give it back.
16:20Give me my baby back.
16:22Give me my baby.
16:26In the movies that I've done,
16:27sometimes the crew really are risking
16:31violence or jail time or expulsion.
16:36You know, no jokes aside, I mean,
16:37some of them have spent a night in a cell
16:39or been chased or been in very difficult
16:43and potentially violent situations.
16:45So they have to really believe in the project,
16:48you know, and they have to believe
16:49that I've got their back
16:50and that I'm looking after them as well.
16:53And that we're making a movie,
16:55not just to be entertaining,
16:56but to do hopefully something good.
17:00So the end of Bruno was Bruno
17:06and his assistant kiss and make love
17:10in the middle of a UFC fighting ring.
17:16So we get on the phone with the lawyer before
17:17and we go, what can we do?
17:18What can't we do?
17:19We're going to have 2,000 people in there.
17:20They said, but the most important thing
17:21is you don't incite a riot.
17:23I go, well, the end of the movie is written
17:24that there's a riot in this.
17:26He goes, well, if you've crossed state lines
17:28to incite a riot, that's a federal offence.
17:31You can go to jail for up to five years.
17:33I had to make out with this guy.
17:35Touched him, but I couldn't put it in my mouth.
17:36He could squeeze my buttocks,
17:39but not play with my anus.
17:41He could, all these things that were specific
17:43to the law of that particular, of Arkansas.
17:47And, you know, we hired 15 security guards
17:50because we knew it was gonna be really dangerous.
17:51We had a parole officer there
17:53who had a lot of his guys who'd just got out of jail
17:56came to fill in the crowd.
18:00And at one point I just got carried away.
18:04We had this fight for me and my assistant,
18:07who I'm secretly in love with.
18:08Comes in, he looks weaker than I do.
18:11I beat him up and he's bleeding.
18:13He had weird fake blood capsules.
18:15And the crowd start booing me.
18:18And I got carried away.
18:19And I said to the crowd, you know,
18:21what the fuck are you talking about?
18:23You know, come on in, if you fuckers come in here,
18:26I'll beat the shit out of you.
18:28Knowing that I had security, no one could get in.
18:30Basically, I got too into character
18:32and I, you know, forgot about what the lawyer had said.
18:36And I see this huge guy running to the cage.
18:39The guy grabs the cage, does a flip, lands in front of me.
18:44And he's huge.
18:45He's like six, nine.
18:47And he is a trained ultimate fighter.
18:49And I realized at that point, I'm gonna get badly hurt.
18:52And I had one guard, we built a trap door
18:56and he pulls open the trap door.
18:58He goes, go, go, go, which means go, go, go.
19:01We can run out there, but we hadn't finished the movie.
19:04So we drive overnight to a different part of Arkansas
19:09and we'd shoot the scene again.
19:12Trial of the Chicago 7.
19:16We carried certain ideas across state lines.
19:20Not machine guns or drugs or little girls, ideas.
19:25When we crossed from New York to New Jersey
19:27to Pennsylvania, to Ohio, to Illinois,
19:29we had certain ideas.
19:32And for that, we were gassed, beaten, arrested
19:36and put on trial.
19:37In university, I did a undergraduate thesis
19:41about basically progressive Jews
19:43who were in the black civil rights movement in the 60s.
19:46One of them was Abbie Hoffman.
19:48Then I heard they were making a movie about the Chicago 7
19:52and I called up Steven Spielberg and said,
19:55I'd just done Borat.
19:56And I said, I'd really like to play Abbie Hoffman.
19:58He said, great.
19:59For me, the costume and the language
20:02and the accent are really important.
20:05So I'm playing a real person.
20:08So I was looking at his language
20:10and I thought, why don't we use his costume?
20:12And actually it was performative.
20:14He was very conscious about what he was wearing.
20:17So I'm using his language.
20:20Why not use what he wore?
20:22So I insisted on wearing things
20:25that he had worn at the time and having his hair
20:28because that also was a statement.
20:30He was saying, I'm a yippee, I'm free.
20:33I'm against the establishment.
20:35This is a political trial that was already decided for us.
20:39Ignoring that reality is just weird to me.
20:41There are civil trials and there are criminal trials.
20:45There's no such thing as a political trial.
20:47Okay.
20:48So there was zero improvisation
20:51and that was a challenge for me
20:55because I wanted to give Aaron a variety of takes
21:00to use in the edit.
21:01So he said, listen, it's fine.
21:02You know, that one take you've given me is great.
21:05We're moving on.
21:06I said, listen, for me, I would love to give you options.
21:10So what I'll do is I'll do a take
21:13and then I'm going to keep the camera rolling.
21:16I'll stop for two seconds
21:17and then I'll do the take again
21:18but in a completely different way.
21:20I'll stop for two seconds and then do it again.
21:23So, you know, a one minute monologue
21:25would be three minutes and a bit
21:28and then you've got options in the edit.
21:30You know, he needed to be convinced
21:31but the editor really liked it
21:34and used a bunch of that stuff.
21:36But it was, yeah, it was fun.
21:39The strategy of throwing banana peels all over Chicago
21:42and the machine will stumble.
21:44When it stumbles, it goes into a policy of overkill
21:48and it starts to devour itself.
21:50We got to convince him.
21:52Got to convince him of what?
21:53That we're crazy enough to do anything.
21:56The greatest dialect coach in the world
21:58is a guy called Tim Monick.
22:00If there were Oscars for dialect coaches,
22:02he would have won 12.
22:05He's worked on most great movies you've ever seen
22:09and amazingly after Hugo, he said,
22:11okay, I'll work with you.
22:13Madagascar.
22:22So, Jeffrey Katzberg says,
22:26he's running DreamWorks.
22:27He goes, I want you to be in a movie.
22:29Shrek had just come out.
22:30I thought DreamWorks were great.
22:32I go, sure.
22:32So, he said, it's set in Madagascar.
22:34I want you to play this lemur.
22:36He's king of the lemurs.
22:37I said, cool.
22:38He goes, all right, come up with a voice
22:39and lets me up, you know, in a few days.
22:42And basically, I've done a lot of research
22:44on actual Madagascan voices
22:47and he hated it.
22:49And then we spent about two hours,
22:51me going through about 17 voices that I had.
22:55And in the end, we landed on this guy
22:58who was my sister-in-law's uncle,
23:01called Uncle Tsion.
23:02Welcome, giant pansies.
23:06Please feel free to bask in my glow.
23:08I had this kind of, you know, voice like this.
23:12He lived in Singapore, then moved to Australia.
23:16He was originally from Iraq.
23:18Really complicated.
23:20And he would make jokes about satay the whole time.
23:22I said, there's a problem with this character
23:24in that he's stupid.
23:25I think they'd written him as not stupid.
23:27And I said, it's gonna be much funnier if he's an idiot.
23:30But, you know, the plot won't work
23:32unless he has a sidekick who is intelligent.
23:36So, we created the sidekick character.
23:39Wait, I have a plan.
23:42Really?
23:42I've devised a cunning test
23:45to see whether these are savage killers.
23:48Me and Ant Hines would, who was my co-writer,
23:52would go into the recording studio and improv.
23:55You know, he was playing essentially the straight man
23:57I was being stupid.
23:59And we'd go on these very, very long improvs that were,
24:03you know, some of the improvs were like 40 minutes long.
24:05I came back one day and I said,
24:07how about I like to move it, move it?
24:09And he goes, all right.
24:10We tried it with the director
24:11and suddenly it felt great in that character.
24:15And I did it in one go.
24:17I did it in one go.
24:17Physically fit, physically fit.
24:19So, all in one go, the New York Giants.
24:22You know, we'd roll the mouth and yeah.
24:25Physically fit, physically, you know, me dancing.
24:27All of that, all of King Julian,
24:29all the physicality is me.
24:32Hugo.
24:35Gustaf, have a heart.
24:36Please help me.
24:42Please.
24:43No, he's been undermining this station for too long.
24:46Stop.
24:48I am the station inspector.
24:51And, you know, when I first read the script,
24:55it wasn't a very interesting part.
24:57And I sat down with Marty and with John Logan,
25:02the screenwriter, and I said, all right,
25:04I've got a great idea where we do this chase
25:07and we turn a corner and my leg flies off my body
25:11and into camera.
25:12And that then translated into he had an issue with his leg,
25:16that he'd been injured in World War I,
25:19had this kind of leg brace.
25:21And, you know, so trying to get,
25:24how do you stop this guy from being just a pretty
25:27unconstructed normal villain to being an interesting character?
25:31So I said, you know, could he have a love story?
25:33And so we got Emily Mortimer in
25:36and she's got a flower stall
25:38and we create a little romance for him
25:40that this guy who's, you know,
25:43wounded in World War I
25:46and is actually desperate for some connection.
25:49So what was interesting was he completely let me improvise.
25:53We'd be doing a scene, you know,
25:54we've done, you know, 12 different angles of it.
25:57I'm running off to the boy and I said,
26:00oh, it's a shame I didn't think of this beforehand,
26:03but it'd be great if I accidentally push over this woman here
26:06and that would have been funny.
26:07And he goes, let's try it.
26:08And I go, but how are you going to edit that together?
26:10You've already done 11 angles.
26:12He goes, if it's good, we'll just use that angle.
26:16So it's a brilliant, again,
26:18me learning from the greatest director of all time
26:22how to make a movie where you don't need coverage
26:24if it's great.
26:26Les Misérables.
26:29Radio is a handshake and an open palm
26:32tells a saucy tale, makes a little stone.
26:34Customers appreciate the bon vivre.
26:37I joined Les Mis very late.
26:40I was shooting The Dictator and I originally turned it down
26:43because I said, I can't make the schedule.
26:45I'm in the edit of this
26:47and I have to get it out for a certain time.
26:49So they let me join the last three weeks of production.
26:54Tom Hooper was filming.
26:56So he said, you know what?
26:57He was a great collaborator.
26:59He really believes in collaboration.
27:00He said, why don't you work out that routine
27:04for Master of the House?
27:06And then I'll pop in once every couple of days
27:08and show me what you've got.
27:10It was singing live and I ended up blowing my voice,
27:14lost my voice completely.
27:15And so I went on voice rest.
27:16It came to shooting Master of the House
27:19and I knew the whole routine.
27:22He didn't.
27:23So I basically have to write it out.
27:25You know, I go, this comes out here
27:26because I couldn't speak, you know?
27:28And I was saving the voice just to sing.
27:31So it's quite a bizarre thing of me.
27:35You know, the camera's here.
27:36The joke is here.
27:37You know, he wanted it to be funny.
27:38That ordering the wine, making up the way,
27:42picking up their knickknacks when they can't see straight.
27:46The Spy.
27:49This is all so confusing.
27:50They seem to have a revolution every two months.
27:53We like to joke that the leader is the first Syrian officer
27:56to get to the radio in the morning,
27:58tell the people he's president.
28:02Tomorrow I'm scheduled to hand in your report to Yakov.
28:07What does it say?
28:08So The Spy was a very obscure story
28:11about an Israeli spy born in Egypt
28:14who then moves to Israel and goes undercover
28:17in Syria called Eli Cohen.
28:20And he, in a way, is one of the most successful spies
28:25in the post-World War II era.
28:28Never kills anyone, never shoots anyone, fights anyone.
28:30But he helps Israel win one of the crucial wars.
28:36And he manages to ascend up the ranks in Syria
28:42by basically being charming.
28:43It was a story that I knew about.
28:45It was very obscure.
28:46But the book was in our house when we grew up.
28:48Our man in Damascus.
28:50And eventually I agreed to do it.
28:53I learned an Egyptian accent and a Syrian accent.
28:56It's probably, when you look at it,
28:58if you don't live in the Middle East,
28:59you will not be able to tell the difference.
29:02My name is Kamel Amin Thabit.
29:08If I'm right, I've lied to you twice before.
29:12You rejected me twice too.
29:13Maybe if you do live in the Middle East,
29:15you'd think I've got it wrong.
29:16But it was to help me go into the two characters.
29:20He's playing a role.
29:22Disclaimer.
29:25I know that you hate yourself.
29:27You haven't even heard a fly.
29:28You're a good person.
29:29Am I?
29:30Of course you are, Poppet.
29:31You are Saint Catherine.
29:32I don't know that I am a good person.
29:35Robert is a well-to-do, well-educated lawyer
29:43for a philanthropic legal firm.
29:46He's an interesting person because he is,
29:49seems like a really supportive husband,
29:51but he's actually slightly jealous
29:54of the success of his wife.
29:55And he's what would be called a beater
29:58who, through this new information
30:01and after the pain and the suffering,
30:04manages to use it to diminish her
30:08in a fairly cruel but, in his mind, virtuous way.
30:13Part of the reason when I do these movies,
30:15and they're pretty, pretty rare
30:18that I'm jumping into somebody else's world,
30:21is really to learn and steal their techniques
30:24and sometimes some of their crew.
30:26So, you know, he's a good visual effects producer.
30:28He's a good cameraman.
30:29Alfonso is one of the greatest directors of all time.
30:34You know, he's made a bunch of incredible,
30:38incredible movies.
30:39He's very, you know, firstly, visually,
30:42everything has got to be absolutely perfect.
30:43He's working with Chivo, who, you know,
30:46Manuel Lubezki, who's this legendary DP.
30:51And so everything visually has to be perfect,
30:53but then he is as obsessed by performance.