"Sacha Baron Cohen"

Guys, when's the last quickie you had? I'm Sean. Well, probably yesterday. What do you mean by quickie?

What do you mean by probably yesterday? Welcome to smart lessons. JB, let's just get into your hairs midway. Short.

Yeah, I know. Look at that. And tomorrow morning, the rest of this garbage comes off and I'll just be in to stubble and then I'll be into a mullet. And you're already kind of a little bit of your hair.

Yeah. So I'm going to keep the party in the back and pull in some business on the sides and the top. And that'll work for two days. And then we go backwards 20 years.

So I'll go back into your level, your short hair, Sean. And clean shave like a Michael Bluth. You're going to go back to Michael Bluth or a Marty Bird or really every other part I've ever played in my life. How dare you?

How dare you? Yeah. The acting stretches have not been significant. Not true.

Well, you'll be sad to see the change go. Yeah, a little bit. But I got to tell you, I don't know how women do it with the long hair and the showering. It's always tangled in your face.

And it takes you 20 minutes to wash your hair. It's just a nightmare. Yeah, it's been coming up on a year since you've been growing that hair out. It's longer than a year.

Yeah. So this is a big, this is going to be a big departure. Yeah, I can't wait. My daughters are excited to be done with my nonsense.

My wife is not happy about it. So I saw your wife last night. Yeah, that's what I heard. Yeah.

And she said to me, she's like, I like, because my hair's a little bit longer than I usually have. And she goes, I like it that way. And then her friend goes, no, it's too long. Yeah, I like it like that.

And then also proceeded to tell me that I was a little overweight. Oh, this is another guest at the party. Yeah. So this is the host.

And I'm like, OK, well, that feels great. You look, I think you look beautiful. Yeah. You actually look a little thin to me.

That's what I said. I'd like to fatten him up a little bit. You look thinner. Sorry, I don't mean to talk to you about this.

I'm sort of like concubine that's just coming. Can you hold, is that like a plump you up a little bit before our session? I love John. How are you feeling?

You're still in New York. We still haven't seen each other. I know, but I know. We don't like each other.

But when you're done with your show, this is my plan. I was going to say this. But I was going to say, please come over. Thursday night, let's do it because I'm getting on Wednesday.

Let's do a Thursday night dinner, either at Shawnee at your apartment or somewhere. Let's do it. I'm great. Yeah, great.

Because I'm furious that I have now. I'm finishing on Wednesday after seven or eight months on this thing. And not including the prep. A month prep.

Well, no, that includes it. And my wife, because she's smarter and kinder about our friends than I am, has forced me to not come home after eight months of being away and stay an extra five days to go see our friend who's opening in a new play. And so I have to sit here and just kill five days of my life waiting for this. But that's when you come over and we'll take care of you.

But I mean, I don't think our friend would care if I come see it like in a month or in two months, right? It's opening night that big of a deal. No, but we're, yeah, it's nice. We're all going to go.

It's going to be nice. You're doing it for somebody else. Yeah. Why didn't we all do it later?

What do you think your face is doing right now? It probably looks pretty pissed off. That's just gravity. Yeah.

But it's the good. Nice thing to do. We're going to go for dinner. The three of us that we're going to do jacket.

JB, we already talked about this. So you're going to kill some time for me. You're not going to be stuck out on Long Island. You're going to stay here and sit here.

No, I'm not going to go long. I'm just going to be in the city all the time. Oh, great. All right.

I want you to talk to the kids and the wife get here on Friday. Right, exactly. And Sean is still in town. Yeah.

And I'm still not saying him. We worked it out. We worked this out. We had all laid out for you.

If you come when you come home. If you're listening out there and you want to grab a lunch or something, just let us know. I was walking down the street the other day. And the girl had her ear buds in.

She goes, oh my God. Sean Hayes, I go, yes, she goes. You're really in New York. Just like you said, you were on the podcast.

I mean, I don't make it up. Now, all right. Here comes a guest. It's been fifty four minutes.

No, twenty four minutes. This guest has been waiting with my bad technological problems. All right. Today, if you're listening, pleasure, I brought to you an actor, a writer, a producer, an academic, an activist, and a cellist.

All in one. A cellist. A cellist. For me, his ability to deliver social, political, and religious commentary wrapped up in side splitting comedy is completely unmatched, making him one of the most effective and valuable satirists we have in this world.

He started multiple movies, both comedic and dramatic, worked with some of our fanciest directors, been nominated one multiple awards and he is my absolute favorite person to seat a party. The sneaky handsome, devastatingly funny, Cambridge smart yet always cheeky, Sasha Baron come. I'm so sorry for the delay. I mean, I don't feel so bad knowing it.

Now that it's okay. Well, let me butter him up and then you take him down. It's ridiculous that I've left somebody of your stature to waiting this long. I apologize.

Come come. Please. It's an honor to be 114th. Yes.

You're deep. You should have been on earlier. Yeah. I'm sorry.

When you do, when you have a big act, you don't have the marquee act first. You have the opening. You make people wait. You have 230 opening acts.

It's deeper than that. Hey, Sasha. Hi. Nice to meet you, Sasha.

I don't think I've ever met you. We never met. That's a big surprise. Lovely to meet you too.

We'll keep your knees bent on that one. Where, Sasha, you're in Los Angeles or New York? I'm in Mirea in French Polynesia where I live now. Oh, wow.

This isn't a bit. Yeah, no, it's a bit. Would you ever live in French Polynesia? Because that sounded great.

You know what? I actually considered, I looked into it very thoroughly. Sure. Like, really?

That particular vibe. Yeah, during the pandemic, we knew we were going to move but we were looking somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere because we knew that the fluency- The virus doesn't last as long in the Southern Hemisphere. It's a Northern Hemisphere. The virus was due to what's- At that point, it was somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere and so we had missed the virus.

We were advised by some- someone to try on top of it and say what happened to me. Absolutely. So we looked into French Polynesia. I looked carefully and it's how he did it.

It was interesting. Yeah. There's a bilingual school. Yeah.

You know, there's beaches. to the brand-o, have you been to Mariah? I have been to Mariah, and I've been to, I've not been to the brand-o, it's pretty bad, and I have been to Bora Bora. Where's the brand?

And I can tell you everywhere else that I visited as well. This sounds like real elite fuck-off conversation, but- No, no, no, no, Listen, let's discuss the best, totally. No, but, listeners, I always thought to heat, he was like, you know, on the edge of the earth, it's only three hours past Hawaii for anybody on the West Coast, you know, so people on the West Coast they go to Hawaii all the time, it's like Florida for the people in New York. It's eight hours.

But it's just three hours past that. And you're very familiar with it, Jamie, because you actually worked there. So you went down there to fulfill an obligation. Couples are true.

Yeah, yes. And then- I am happy to discuss French Polynesia. At length. To the end.

Actually, I wasn't a shark attack though once. You weren't? I've kind of seen a feeding frenzy. You were in one.

In Mariah. I went shark diving in Bora Bora. Yeah. So, does that where it came from?

Did you go down to dive with sharks and things got a little hot? In those days, I think it's illegal now, they used to do something called shark feeding, where I was doing my paddy license, and then- That's how you get certified as a scuba diver, and what happened? And then, yeah, the guy I was with, some French instructor, had basically said we're going to feed some sharks, and then he puts on a chainmail hand thing. Obviously, we're underwater, and he just had been in it, and it was just me and him.

And he basically breaks open a santino, remember it. And then I remember seeing the droplets of blood. And then within literally two minutes, there were 12 sharks around. No way.

And then he pulled out this bag, this tuna head. And he's got a chainmail hand on, chainmail kind of glove on. And they start eating the thing, and it's really interesting. And I'm there opposite.

Then they get carried away. And there's a feeding frenzy. And you can't see anything. And he's looking at you with eyebrows high, like isn't this funny?

He's not looking at me. His glove gets knocked off in his regulator. No. Gets knocked out of his mouth.

And then he leaves. He needs some air. He goes up and leaves me alone with the 12 shocks. No, and I can't see a thing.

As you put up one finger, like I'll be right back. No, nothing. It was literally nothing. Yeah.

I went down there with a guy. He put a tuna head in his wetsuit, in the front of his wetsuit, in order to have all the sharks. There was a big group of us. And I mean, this was planned.

And he said not to worry about it. And we did a little bit. And then it was OK. And you can see in their eyes that they're not interested in you.

Like, you know, sharks are always scary when your head's kind of just above the water. You don't know what's going on below. But once you get under it and you can look at a shark, look at you and then kind of swim away. Your fear of sharks goes away instantly.

I highly recommend it. That did not happen when the sharks not the regulator out of his mouth knocked the gloves off. And he's finding why. Sean, you told me once you walked out of a Ralph's with like 12 cans of tuna in your pants, right?

Is that a true word? Did that happen? That was like a dream come true. Yeah.

But Sasha, you sound like that was a surprise that it went awry. I was. And I basically started hyperventilizing. This was my second time diving.

Am I right? Yeah. But I mean, like, actually, the guy put his regulator back on, put the glove back. Because he'd left me alone, went back down.

And then the first shark went to attack him. And he punched it in the nose. I mean, this is all good for the right lovers out there. No, but that's your supposed to do.

He's defending himself. That's OK. Yeah. I mean, if the shark is eating you and you're just going, I didn't want to punch it in the nose.

You can hurt me. I don't want to hurt you. Yeah. No, you're allowed.

Are you sure that the shark wasn't just coming to him for more sort of that blood? He wasn't going to try to bite the guy. I don't think so. I think they were just in a front.

He headbutted. Did they interview the shark? He headbutted him. He headbutted him.

One of the sharks, the lemon shark, which I think was kind of out. That's a big one. Feet long. Yeah.

He headbutted that shark. No, of course. You have to in France. We headbutted.

Yeah. Afterwards, I did go up to him. And I said, in the end, I basically came out to be checked my oxygen. And I completely run out of oxygen.

And then we did some emergency procedure. Well, you take his regulator. He puts it in your mouth. And you put yours.

He puts it in the same way. Don't worry. It's fine. It's just how we regularly get it.

It's a very long ruse. We're both in this. We go down below. This hasn't wrecked your love of scuba diving.

Has it? No, no, no. I went back the next day. I did say to him, I've got hurt on any of your times.

And he said, two people have died. No way. For real. There is a guy who was famous.

Yeah. He was a cave diver. Those guys are completely crazy. And you know, he basically missed the fun of and the thrill of cave diving.

I think scuba diving is like scuba diving is the most magical thing I've ever done. I would love to do it more. But what if you said, what if you said, have anybody ever done? And he goes, yes, two people.

And you said, like, in a cave where he goes, no, I murdered them. This was above me. He was about to know what that was. No, the night before I murdered them.

I strangled them. You do a lot of that stuff, Sasha? Like, you would thrill seek? Are you a thrill seeker?

Really? No, no, no. No. You've ever skydived?

Would you? I have not. I would not. Have you?

Have you? I was a week away from it. And then I canceled it. Because I said to myself, OK, what do you think you'd feel at the end?

And then I realized all I would feel is relief. And then I thought, well, I've just had my first kid and I shouldn't be doing things that I'm excited about having gotten away with it. You know, like no longer should I be doing things I get away with. And so I stopped.

I said, you know what, I don't want to do it. And none of you guys have done it. Would all three of you do it? I did the emulation thing.

But no. What do you mean? The fucking little fly suit at Universal Studios? You get into it?

Absolutely. No. No, no, no, no, no. It doesn't count.

So Sasha Baron, let's drop the Baron, huh? That's always just to make me even more curious. Well, let's do it. Well, wait, is it Baron is not a part of the last name.

Is it just your middle name? It's part of the last name. Oh, got it. So Sasha, your blend of comedy and, for lack of a better term, education is, as I said in the intro, I find personally so admirable.

And like you make the medicine go down super easy for ding dongs like me. And the stuff you shine a light on, not only just on issues, but also sort of ethics and bigotry and et cetera, et cetera. Where does that come? Well, I kind of know where it comes from.

But tell the audience, like, when did that, when did you figure out you could blend your social awareness with your comedic talents? Firstly, thank you very much for that. Let's take it down. I just love it.

I can spend all day. Yeah. But please don't. I think it's the first time, actually the second time I did ball wrap.

So basically ball wrap was created. I was doing like a satellite TV show called F2F. Well, I was the host of air. It was a discussion show for teenage kids.

We talked about everything. And you talk about teen topics. And I wanted to be a comedian. And so I would go and pre record characters that I could throw to.

And basically I went out once and I had a skateboarding character that was an early form of Aligee. And then I basically saw some real skateboarders and the guy I was with, this sort of old director from Ealing Studios who had lost all his money and was working on this really shitty satellite TV show. I said, look, those guys look like me. I go, do you think I should talk to them?

And he said, 100%. So I go over to these guys and I'm basically on my skateboard and I'm playing this early Aligee character. And they thought I was real. And after about three minutes, I said, guys, you know, I'm not real.

This is just a playing a lot. They were completely freaked out. And then I, a tourist bus came. I jumped on the tourist bus.

I commandeered it. I started wrapping, got off the bus, went into a park. You're a result. You're a result, maybe.

This was, I think, 1995 or four. Anyway, I basically go into a park. I stopped right down to the police. I go into some big business.

I claim that my dad's upstairs and he's the CEO. They call security. We run back to this live TV show. I run.

They put on my normal clothes. And this guy, this legendary guy who's an editor at Ealing Studios, is editing while I'm on air. This is, this is the days of new mattics. This is, he's like cutting, you know, every losing forefrag, and he's adding music.

This guy was a kind of legendary guy. And I'm cutting to this stuff. And it's, you know, me with real people. So it was the first time that it was a comic character with real people.

And you realize that you could troge and horse some of the social commentary inside a comedy. Yeah. You're right. I'm not really answering your question.

Talk. This was like the first time I ever did, you know, characters in the real world. Yeah. You weren't doing that.

Yeah. Like, even Ali G, you weren't really early on an Ali G. You weren't really making commentary. You were just fucking with people.

Yeah. Early on. Well, but you were exposing sort of the low, the low brow perspective on certain things that deserve a high brow analysis. Yeah.

And I think in a way, Ali G was kind of a undermining of the establishment. Yeah. It was essentially saying, OK, these people that run society, they are completely out of the touch with society. So they will believe that this guy is real, despite him asking the most absurd questions.

Can I tell you, Sasha, I think I've told you this, and Jamie, you might know this, but I don't mean to speak ill of the dead. But they don't get it. They're not going to criticize Hitler again. I mean, but no, I told you I wouldn't ever remember.

You made me. I said that. I promised him. Yeah.

Yeah. I was in tears. Yeah. You were in a wreck of theory.

So it's a weak thing. It's one of the weirdest positions. We picked at the vanity fair party when you were not in position. You think Sasha would have.

But boy, no, was years ago right after it aired. And I want to say about 2003 for something like that. You were still doing Aligia at the time before Borat. And I was at a party because he was on a rest of the moment with James Lipton.

Jason, you were there too. And I just seen it. And I said to James Lipton, I go, oh, I saw you on Aligia. And I said, how did it go?

The actor studio go? Yeah. Yeah. And he was on a rest of the world.

He played the warden of the prison. Yeah. Warden, Warden, Gentiles, Gentiles? Yeah.

Yeah. That's right. And it's a really funny bit to have him as the word at the right. And the whole time he's really just trying to get the model to play it like a musical.

But he says, I said, yeah. So you got it. It was so funny. And he goes, I knew when he came in, I knew that it was a bit.

And he went on this whole thing. And I just watched it. I'm thinking like, look at him. No, absolutely no idea.

Because he took me off camera after we finished the interview back to the other room. And so, you know, I was still in character. He completely believed who I was. And then he showed me like a painting of naked.

Of his wife, woman. Yes. Is that what's what in the other is? Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, she is. Man, I was mown down. Yo.

Somebody else. Wait, you know how you know that somebody else has told me that very same thing that he came back and said, this is a naked picture painting my wife. There we go. You verified the story.

That is fact checking. Well, you've just fact checked. There you go. We've established me as a reliable witness.

And that started the classic line from Borat of it's my wife. Yeah. It was my naked wife. All right.

James left and we actually made a beautiful, by the way. She was beautiful. I'll bet. Classically, if we use those kind of ways to categorize women.

Sure. What does it mean? Of course. We'll be right back.

And now back to the show. At the beginning, when I asked her about the risk taking, I was like, would you do anything else other than swim at the sharks or whatever? And you said, no, absolutely not. I'm talking about skydiving.

I just realizing like this, what you do is so high risk. So it's like that much fulfill some kind of like Russia. Yeah. Do you love that kind of Russia?

That kind of Russia, like you're about to get caught in. Right. You're not doing that as much anymore, correct? Is that because you're just sort of like older and wiser and you don't want to get hit or run anymore?

The last, sorry, sorry. Yeah. No, end of question. Interrupted.

I thought I was going for that. Let me throw me a line. No, I can go on. And then there was an all.

Then there was an all. With the last war out movie, there was quite a lot of that stuff. And actually, I mean, we did. There was a scene at a gun rally, which was got quite hairy.

I remember reading about that. Yeah. Yes, it was. You know, I mean, people with semi-automatics and automatics in the audience.

And it was a militia, unfortunately, that had organized it, that then didn't take it very well. And I was thinking of a song called the Wuhan Flu. That's right. Everybody got to do it.

I think I remember it. I mean, where does the fearlessness come from, though? I mean, I'll tell you the truth with that scene, because we knew that they were going to be, you know, basically it was a gun rally and everyone was coming. It was the middle of COVID.

We were the only movie shooting. And so, you know, my security said, listen, you need to have a bulletproof vest on. And so I put on the bulletproof vest and I said, they go, that's fine for pistols. And they said, I go, once if somebody shoots the semi-automatic.

And, you know, if it's not just one person. So they built, so I was singing on stage. So they built an amplifier that was pretty much bombproof. So they basically said, you know, if people start really shooting, with the semi-automatics, go behind the amplifier and you'll be safe.

What? Jesus. And so the thing is, you know, you're in the scene, I'm on stage and, you know, you have this kind of conflict between, you know, I'm terrified and then you always have, I need to get the scene. So you want to, so I was doing, you know, the same, a verse again, because I felt I hadn't got a good take affair.

They were getting more and more, you know, they realized at some point that it was me on stage. There was somebody actually undercover from Black Lives Matter had infiltrated this gun rally. And basically they recognized me and word spread that it was me. And then people started trying to storm the stage.

Right, because they realized they were getting clowned. Yeah. And obviously they were head guns. And then, but I'm trying to get the scene and obviously to do as many different takes.

And eventually they did storm the stage. And actually somebody pulled a gun. Jesus. And luckily I had a very good bodyguard at the time who managed to pick a bullet.

Yeah, he's dead. But he came from such a beautiful funeral. That's why you said at the time. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. He was such a, he went away so well. He went away so well.

He went away so well. And when you're, it's funny you mentioned reasonable because I was going to say you, as part of this and you've kind of the situation you described, you have to deal with a lot of people who some might consider to be kind of unreasonable, to be extremist of, you know, in certain ways. And my question is when you deal with all these people and you're, and you're revealing all this or pulling back the sort of the covers on all this connection to you, do you ever have a moment where you go, you know what, this person is kind of a good person. They're just really, they've just gotten off on the wrong path or misinformed.

I'm sure some of them are despicable. Yeah. But just summer and misinformed. But actually at the heart, they're kind of good people.

Yes. So these two guys I spent three days in a house with called Jim and Jerry and they were. This is Bruno, right? No, this was bull rat to.

Right. You know, they believe that Hillary Clinton drank the blood of children and COVID was a conspiracy and that Hillary killed kids. But they were actually, they were nice people. They were good people.

They were just misinformed. And so you suddenly realize they're, and that they're actually feminists because, well, when I was, you know, when I was being, when Boris was being a misogynist about his daughter, they were like, they took it upon themselves to teach me that it was important to be respectful to your daughter and she wanted to do her and things she should do. So they, they were actually good guys and you suddenly realized, and it was a surprise, right? Because they have those views and you want to dismiss these people as being horrific.

Yeah. And then you suddenly realize that actually any good person, if they're fed a set of ideas and set of information that's wrong, can believe conspiracy theories that ultimately lead to horrific stuff, right? Right. Yeah, we, at the risk of stepping towards political, which we try not to do on this because God knows people get enough of that shit away from here.

But just on the subject, do you feel hopeful at all that there's a scenario of possibility where those who feel so disenfranchised and aggrieved can be brought into a sense of, well, actually, I guess we aren't, you know, we shouldn't be tribalized. We can all kind of get along and work as one. Like, do you see that as a possibility? I don't give in the state of the current, you know, internet and information laws, basically.

Yeah, that possibly you can penetrate this misinformation and make it healthy. Well, you know, you're being fed so much stuff that polarizes you. Yeah. You know, if you look at the craziness that is going on in the world, it's everything has been accelerating since, you know, social media came along.

So until really, in my opinion, until you actually get laws that, you know, you get legislation that curbs the power of those social media companies and says, all right, actually you can't spread lies like this that kill people or that completely undermine democracy. And you are, you are legitimately educated on this issue of free speech versus, you know, trying to keep the social media sites from being regulated. And so my question to you is, what is that difference between, well, free speech should be given to everybody, but you can't yell fire in a crowded theater. So what is that line?

And who is the one that can, that can say, oh, yeah, this qualifies as you can't yell fire in a crowded theater. And therefore you can't say that. Like who decides what statements get put in that category? I mean, these are very big questions, huge.

And they kind of vary from country to country. So, you know, in England and Australia and Germany, you know, you have laws about hate speech and about certain types of misinformation. In America, obviously you have complete free speech, but it's not up to those. Except for rallying.

Yelling fire. Yes, well, actually you kind of can at the moment. I mean, the internet companies, because they're not regulated because of this thing called Section 230, they can put out. Which is a free speech thing, right?

Section 230 isn't really about free speech. It basically says you can't see them. So once you can't sue a company, you know, they have no obligation to, you know, maintain the free speech of the United States in the same way that a restaurant can say, you know what, I'm going to throw you out of the restaurant for saying this or that or, you know, having that KKK hood here. Right.

So I think the fact that they're saying that they care about free speech, basically because it's fantastic for their business model, it means that they can have every single person in the world can be on meta, can be on Instagram, can be on X, right? They don't actually care really about free speech. No, look at Elon Musk who consistently talks about free speech and he'll do that. And then out of the other side of his mouth, he's, you know, sort of decrying the government for doing X, Y, and Z, or he's kicking people off or he's muting them on Twitter.

I actually don't want to talk to him anymore airtime together such a, in my opinion, so fucking unfunny, it's crazy, which is I think the most damning thing about one of, you know, a lot of damning things, but the fact is how profoundly unfucking funny he is is so astonishing. But that's why your work and, you know, your courage, quite frankly, in my opinion, is so valuable. And, you know, I'd take it, I wish you were back on a weekly show. I'd take it once a week.

So thank you for all that. I think you're right. Yeah, Jamie, we need to have that sort of, you need to be in their lampooning and really showing shedding light on the hypocrisy alone is so fucking jarring, right? It's refreshing to...

I mean, it must be fun for you when you have those people say, when you put them in that position, and then they say the thing that you're like, fucking, this is unreal. Yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously it's horrific, but you go, you know, while I'm actually in the room, I'm editing the scene as well. So in my head, I'm going, you know, and once they've got the thing, I go, oh, that's great.

And now one follow up question, bang. OK, now I'm going to move on to the next bit. You know, because there's obviously no direct to that. Yeah.

Where did you, you know, I've always been taken by your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your silo, your silo. Surprisingly, it's quite a bit more about that. I mean, what do you mean, what do you mean, what do you mean, my figure? So what do you mean, surprisingly, surprisingly, it's surprisingly, but you're, I did say, sneaky handsome in the intro, I believe.

Thank you. But the, and you did start as a model, but we won't even talk about that more in Wikipedia accuracy, but your ability as an actor is like, you know, breathtaking might be overstating it, but I don't have a better one. I don't know. I don't know.

But it's like your comedy is never, your comedy never comes from jokes and you're never making, you know, it's rarely as a prattfall or making faces. It's about your ability to be so convincing with an extremely eccentric character. And yet you can be literally sitting in front of somebody who's super smart and maybe even prime to sort of sniff out some gotcha moments and they still can't tell that it's you, but not even when you're doing, you know, those characters, even when you're just in films and traumas and stuff. Like, where do you, you didn't take formal training as an actor?

Did you? I only did one course. I did. I studied with a philigulier, the legendary clown clown school at Le Corle, philigulier, at a clown school.

Yeah, I did it. But no, I didn't really train acting. No, it's just something that. You're coming.

I think. Does it just come natural to you? How do you, what do you? Well, I think, yeah, I think, you know, we did an experiment after in 2016, I that show who's America came out of me and my collaborator, Antheins and Dan Swimer.

We basically said, you know what, let's just create some characters. I've done a movie, it'd been a complete bomb. And I was like, let's take this opportunity to create some characters. And we decided to go every week for the next 10 weeks, we're going to create a character, write it, create a fake prosthetic head for it.

And at the end of the week, shoot with a real person with a character. And I did that for 10 weeks and there are a variety of crazy characters, some that made it to the show, six we put in the show. And then I realized basically what I was able to do is once I've got the way the character speaks and once I work out what it looks like and once I work out what the clothes are, and I've got a couple of phrases, I could just stick in it. So that was a couple of weeks and I was like, oh, this is what I can do is I can, you know, they call it inhabiting a character.

But I actually kind of, you know, if I've got 30 seconds, whatever, then I can go in it. It's probably must be something wrong with my brain. No, it's, I think some people, it's just, it's just comfortable to them to pretend to be somebody else and they just know how to be super subtle and convincing and authentic and it doesn't trip them up and you're able to stay in it. Well, there's a freedom, but there's a freedom too, if you think about it, because a lot of those times when you're shooting, especially some of the sort of whether it's Borat or Bruner or whatever, you've created a character or multiple characters, but the people you're working with are not aware that they're in a scene in the same way, right?

So it's much, a it's difficult because it's complete verite, right? You're actually in their real life, right? So you've got to not just convince the audience, you've got to convince the person you're dealing with in the moment that you're real, a real person, right? So you've got to do that and there must be a certain, I don't know, like making that leap is tough, I would imagine, like just getting into that.

Yeah, well making it real, I mean, it's funny sometimes I can't, you know, I'll have a director say, you know, I want you to do, you know, a script to move here and they'll go, this time you're going to be playing a real person. Right. And I go, hold on, the other people I play are real people, which is why I'm with Dick Chase's wife. Dick Cheney for three hours and he doesn't doubt once he's with a real person.

What about Giuliani? I mean, thank God, you started that. What can you say? Can you say anything?

Yeah, I can, I think talk about Giuliani. That was amazing. I mean, essentially, you know, that movie. So we're like, why do we bring Paul Ratback?

And actually, I've got to thank Kimmel, where Kimmel said we want you on, it was like the midterms and he wanted me to do some sketch where basically I was a kind of Ashton Kutcher type who had been manipulating Kanye West into turning him into a character that was so ridiculous that he would hang out with Donald Trump. And basically I said, I'll do it so long as Kanye will do it. This was years ago, this was 2018, right? And so I called up Kanye and said, will you do this thing?

And it would be, you know, he'd already met up with Trump and I said, will you do this sketch with us? You know, we're planning out, you know, we're going to create this ridiculous character and it's going to end up with you in Trump Tower. And it's going to be as if you were playing along. And he said, I love the idea, but you know, I need the president to agree.

And I was like, Trump, I go, don't, no, no, don't ask him. So I couldn't do, he goes, no, he goes, no, I love him. And I want you to, I need to ask him. I go, please do not tell him we're doing the sketch at all.

So I couldn't do that sketch. And then basically I decided to do ball rats. Actually, I spoke to Chris Rock. Is that a name drop?

I think so. Sure. What pick it up? Is he got a name drop?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I spoke to Chris Rock, world famous comedian and actor. And he said, why don't you, you know, I was in a rush. Basically I was going to go on air two days time.

He said, just the ball rat going door to door. We did ball rat door to door. Got the mustache out of storage. And then I realized that basically ball rat was just an extreme form of Trump.

They had almost identical views. It was almost like 40% more extreme. I was like, oh, great. We can bring it back for Trump.

And then I was like, how do I infiltrate Trump's world? Like, OK, if he has a daughter who's 15, wouldn't it be great if Trump had sex with her? And so originally I was trying to work out how to get this, you know, actress in with Trump. We got to close them for a while.

But it was, you know, we spoke to a lot of secret service guys. And the idea was like, I would kind of jump out of the wall somewhere. We had like all these plans where, you know, Trump would be in a room. I'd be inside the wall.

He would, you know, hollow out a wall, then build it up around me. And then I burst out when he was with her. And it's an ex top secret service guy who looked after President. And we go, what do you think of this plan?

I'm going to be in there for like five hours. He said the issue is that secret service have a machine that sees if there's anyone else, anyone in the walls. And I go, all right, so I go, what's the worst comes worst? They find that I'm there.

And what they pull me out. It goes, no, they shoot you dead. I go, why? Because why else would you be in a, why would they be a living person inside a wall?

Unless they were trying to make me. They can't negotiate with a guy like you. They just tell me. So we basically gave up on Trump.

Also, you know, we thought at the time that, you know, he was the most protected person in the world. I mean, this was prior to those last unfortunate incidents. But Rudy, but then we found out Rudy was a possibility. And a bit of a time target.

Yeah, but we knew that he was going to be crucial. Yeah. And we kind of researched him. We found out what, what he drank when he started drinking.

Was it, was the answer anything? I think there was, I think there was a particular type of alcohol. But then we heard that he would sweep the room. He had a very senior head of security.

He would come in and sweep the room. And so we built a kind of fake cupboard inside the wardrobe. So fake back to, there was a wardrobe. They opened it.

It would have a fake back to him behind that was me. And so the idea was, you know, I'll just stand in there for, you know, now and a half and that there's a necessary bit. Jump out if he was close to kissing, you know, the girl playing my daughter. And anyway, basically the, we had a crew member who accidentally put me in the wrong room.

And I said, you know, when is, you know, so I would have to be in position for, you know, for this to happen. Otherwise, you know, there's no way to get into the room because his head of security would come into the room, sweep the room, sweep every room. And then he would sit outside so no one could come in with Ruby, really in her. And I was in the wrong room.

And I said, how long till really, you know, goes to the room? And he said, oh, he's on his way there now. And I was like, now? And basically I ran to the room and I literally saw Rudy's leg come around the corner.

I ducked into the room, went into the wardrobe, went behind the fake wall, closed it. And then I heard the door open off his security, you know, sweep the room that I was in and then come out. So he swept to the room. We did the scene, you know, venture.

Oh, by the way, so I'm in there for an hour and a half. And, you know, the only way I can communicate with the director was through a cell phone. We thought of everything. I pick up the cell phone, I'm in the pitch black and there's 3%.