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Sacha Baron Cohen Relives Times He Went Too Far

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Sacha Baron Cohen sat down on Jonathan Ross’s sofa and admitted some of his stunts nearly got him killed.

The comedian, never one to undersell a story, walked through the moments his undercover characters pushed things past the point of safety. Between Borat’s culture-clash interviews and Brüno’s flamboyant provocations, Baron Cohen has spent two decades testing how far a hidden camera and a fake persona can go before real people turn violent. On Ross’s show, he picked out one encounter in particular that still stands out as the closest he came to disaster.

• Baron Cohen recounted filming for the 2009 comedy Brüno in an ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood in Jerusalem, where he walked through the area dressed in revealing attire in character.
• The stunt provoked outrage on the street, and Baron Cohen said he was chased, spat upon, and dragged by an angry mob before he could get to safety.
• He tied the story back to his two most famous alter egos, Brüno the Austrian fashion journalist and Borat the Kazakh reporter, both built to provoke hostile, unscripted reactions from real people.

The Jerusalem Sequence

Of all the stories Baron Cohen has told over the years about his undercover shoots, the Jerusalem sequence for Brüno is the one he keeps coming back to. Dressed in the character’s deliberately provocative outfit and walking straight into an ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood, he set off a reaction that went from shouting to physical outrage within moments. He told Ross the crowd didn’t stay verbal for long — people came at him, spat on him, and grabbed hold of him as he tried to get away.

What makes the story land on a chat show sofa rather than in a news report is that Baron Cohen wasn’t acting scared for the cameras — he described genuine fear for his safety, the kind that comes from realizing a scripted wind-up has turned into an actual mob. He didn’t dress it up as a triumph of comedy; he described it plainly as a moment where the plan nearly fell apart on him.

He was chased, spat upon, and dragged by the crowd before he could find shelter.

Borat and Brüno as Provocation Machines

Baron Cohen built both characters specifically to strip away the polite mask people put on for cameras. Borat Sagdiyev, the naive Kazakh journalist, got Americans to say things on record they’d never say to a reporter who admitted he was joking. Brüno, the over-the-top Austrian fashion correspondent, did something similar but leaned on shock and spectacle rather than naivety, which is exactly why walking him into a conservative religious neighbourhood produced the kind of response Baron Cohen described to Ross.

He made clear on the show that the hostility wasn’t incidental — it was the point of the exercise, and also the risk. The format only works if the people on the other side of the camera don’t know it’s a joke, which means every shoot carried the possibility that a reaction could escalate faster than his crew could pull him out.

Reflecting on the Danger, Not Regretting the Bit

What comes through in the interview isn’t remorse over pushing buttons — it’s Baron Cohen looking back at how close some of these stunts came to going seriously wrong. He treated the Jerusalem chase less like a punchline and more like a near-miss, the kind of story a stunt performer tells about a fall that almost didn’t have a stunt mat underneath it. Ross’s sofa format, built for guests to unpack war stories in a relaxed setting, gave Baron Cohen room to walk through the mechanics of how a joke turns into a genuine physical threat.

Fans of comedians recounting how far a bit went wrong in real time will find a similar rhythm in Funniest Interview Ever as actors go off the rails, where the entertainment comes from watching control slip away on camera. It’s also the same appetite that keeps clips like When ‘Hot Ones’ Guests Get Overconfident… (Seasons 1-10) circulating — audiences like watching a performer’s plan collide with reality.

Baron Cohen didn’t tease what stunt he’d pull next, and on Ross’s sofa he didn’t need to — the Jerusalem story alone was enough to remind everyone why his crews reportedly kept an exit route mapped out before he ever stepped in front of the hidden cameras.