Golden Globe winner Sacha Baron Cohen has made a career out of exposing the inherent ridiculousness of celebrity. He recently said in the New York Times that “sacred cows make the tastiest hamburger,” and has transformed into many different characters in order to uncover ridiculousness, most recently in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. Cohen recently stopped by Jimmy Kimmel Live to celebrate his Best Actor in a Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy win, and part of his time on the late-night show was a skit where Cohen and his wife, actress Isla Fisher, appeared to be running a side business where they were selling coronavirus vaccines.
Cohen kept interrupting the interview with Kimmel, fielding calls from desperate “celebrities” hoping to get their hands on the vaccine. One of the fake phone calls he took was “from” Kanye West, who Cohen said he “had him down for six,” for West, soon-to-be-ex-wife Kim Kardashian, and their four children.
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“Hello? Hello? Yeah, Kanye? Yo, yo, yo. I can get you Johnson & Johnson. No, no. Not Dakota and Don,” Cohen quipped. “What, you only need one now? I’ve got you down for six.” Kimmel quietly points out his mistake. “Oh, sorry, I hadn’t heard,” Cohen is heard saying into the phone to the audience’s delight.
Honestly, Cohen was relatively easy on West and Kardashian, considering how biting some of his jokes can be. During his acceptance speech, Cohen thanked the “all-white” Hollywood Foreign Press Association before taking aim at his (unwitting) costar in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm costar, Rudy Guiliani. He reffered to Guiliani as “fresh new talent who came from nowhere and turned out to be a comedy genius,” before quipping, “Who can get more laughs out of one unzipping? Incredible!” He went on to say that Guiliani “went on to star in a string of comedy films — hits like Four Seasons Landscaping, Hair Dye of the Day and the courtroom drama, The Very Public Fart.”
He also joked that the voting that got him victory was rigged. “Hold on, Donald Trump is contesting the result,” he said. “He claimed a lot of dead people voted, which is a very rude thing to say about the HFPA.” He went on to thank everyone who worked with him on the Borat sequel. “I want to thank my crew, who were amazingly brave, who had the risk of getting arrested the risk of getting COVID and they did it because we all believed so deeply in releasing this movie before the election to show the danger of lies, hate and conspiracies and the power of truth, empathy and democracy,” he said. “Most of all, thank you to my incredibly patient wife, Isla, who has put up with all my madness.” Considering how involved Fisher is with the vaccine skit, she doesn’t just tolerate his madness. She encourages it.
