It can be daunting sitting down with Sacha Baron Cohen. After all, the British comedian has built an entire brand based on interviews intended to embarrass unsuspecting saps. His outrageous alter egos — Borat, Ali G, and Bruno — thrive on the awkward Q&A.
“You’re worried I might be playing you?’’ says Cohen, drinking coffee in the Bristol Lounge one recent morning. “I’ve got two cameramen right over there.’’
It’s not true. Cohen, dressed casually in black jeans and a white shirt, is on his own for this chat. And he is uncharacteristically sincere as he talks about his new movie, “The Brothers Grimsby,’’ a spy action comedy in which he and actor Mark Strong costar as mismatched brothers. Cohen’s character, Nobby, is a football-loving lager lout with a thatch of hair styled with a sharp rock. Strong plays a smooth assassin. The movie opens Friday.
What sets “The Brothers Grimsby’’ apart from Cohen’s earlier movies, notably the mockumentaries “Borat’’ and “Bruno,’’ are the film’s elaborate action sequences. “Grimsby’’ plays for laughs, but Cohen and director Louis Leterrier, whose credits include “The Incredible Hulk’’ and “Clash of the Titans,’’ set out to create action scenes that would be eye-catching.
“The idea was to do an authentic action movie that has a comic character thrown into it,’’ says Cohen, who co-wrote the “Grimsby’’ script with Peter Baynham and Phil Johnston.
But without a blockbuster budget to work with, creating a spectacle worthy of James Bond or Jason Bourne can be difficult. Cohen and Leterrier opted for a PlayStation-style effect using stunt men with tiny cameras attached to their foreheads. It’s an approach pioneered by the young Russian director Ilya Naishuller, who used it in a 2013 music video that has been viewed more than 31 million times on YouTube. (The song, by the band Biting Elbows, has an unprintable title.)
“We didn’t want to parody the Bond style or do a lesser version of it,’’ says Cohen. “This was a cheap way of having high-end action scenes.’’
But “Grimsby’’ at its core is a broad comedy, more Farrelly brothers than Frankenheimer. Cohen’s calling card is still humor that is often wildly politically incorrect and, sometimes, as in the case of a scene in the new movie involving two amorous elephants, just gross. Cohen has made a habit of skewering celebrities — his 2009 interview with astronaut Buzz Aldrin on “Da Ali G Show’’ is a classic — and he’s at it again in “Grimsby,’’ using satire to kick the shins of Donald Trump, Bill Cosby, and Daniel Radcliffe.
“I’m not allowed to speak about [him] because there’s been some legal correspondence,’’ Cohen says, referring to the “Harry Potter’’ actor.
Such concerns are nothing new for Cohen, whose hit-and-run high jinks have caused plenty of legal problems in the past. After the release of “Borat,’’ in which Cohen plays a guileless Kazakh journalist making a documentary about America, some of the film’s unwitting cast members sued the producers claiming they had been duped. (One suit was filed by an etiquette teacher embarrassed by a scene in which a dinner party attendee is handed a plastic bag of human feces.)
“At the end of the day, [the studio] fought the lawsuits — there were more than 100 — and didn’t lose any,’’ says Cohen.
With a modest budget of $18 million, “Borat’’ went on to gross $260 million worldwide and earned an Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay. Still, producers have been inclined ever since to be cautious when it comes to Cohen’s antics.
“Studios, which are now generally owned by multinationals, hire me and there is, immediately, a sense of regret from lawyers who are, like, ‘Why have we hired this guy who’s going to lead to all of these lawsuits?’?’’ says Cohen.
His broader concern, though, is studios’ intense focus on the bottom line and the effect that has on what gets made in Hollywood.
“Yes, there are problems with the [Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences],’’ says Cohen, a reference to the controversy about lack of diversity among this year’s Oscar nominees. (He defied the Academy by appearing onstage at the Oscars as Ali G.) “But it’s a valuable institution because it creates an incentive for studios to put money into movies that are likely to be commercially unsuccessful. Without it, I tend to believe Hollywood would make ‘Fast & Furious 134.’?’’
In the same way that prospective producers and financiers know what they’re in for with Cohen, so do actors. Actress Gabourey Sidibe, who plays a South African chambermaid crudely seduced by Cohen’s character in “Grimsby,’’ said she relished the opportunity to work with the ribald comedian.
Sidibe, who was nominated in 2009 for the best actress Oscar for her role in “Precious’’ and currently appears on the hit TV series “Empire,’’ said she was approached by Cohen a few years ago at a post-Oscar party hosted by Madonna.
“It was a very Hollywood moment. Sacha said he thought I was funny and my reaction was to tell him to shut up,’’ says Sidibe. “I thought he was making fun of me, but he said, no; he wanted me to be in this movie.’’
Sidibe’s scenes, which were shot over a period of two weeks near Cape Town, are raunchy and ridiculous, but the actress says she showed up on set ready for anything.
“Parts of me wanted to say no, but if you take a Sacha Baron Cohen movie, you know it’s going to be a lot of gross-out humor,’’ she says. “Nothing truly surprised me.’’
When Cohen isn’t busy working on his own projects — he also wrote and starred in the 2012 black comedy “The Dictator,’’ in which he plays an absurdly hirsute despot — he occasionally appears in other people’s films. (He had roles in “Hugo,’’ “Les Miserables,’’ and director Adam McKay’s “Anchorman 2.’’)
“But it has to be appealing to me. If it’s Martin Scorsese who pulls up, I’ll do it. If it’s Tim Burton, I’ll do it,’’ Cohen says. “If it’s Adam McKay, I’ll do it. I thought the first ‘Anchorman’ was so fantastic and original.’’
The comedian, who has three children with his wife, actress Isla Fisher, isn’t sure what he wants to do next. But he isn’t ruling out another mockumentary that will allow him to once again gleefully expose phoniness in all its forms.
“I miss it. You get addicted to the adrenaline, but it’s a dangerous addiction because those movies were made with seven or eight people on the road, and the more times you manage to get away with it and evade the police or whatever, the more cocky the group becomes,’’ he says. “But I have no idea what’s next, actually. I live my life in a very simplistic way, which is trying to think of the next funny thing.’’
by mark shanahan | globe staff
COHEN, Page N8
Mark Shanahan can be reached at shanahan@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @MarkAShanahan
