SACHA BARON COHEN STUNS
Racking Up Awards w/ Trial of the Chicago 7 + Borat
From singing to the anti-makser/Q-Anon “March for Our Rights” rally in Olympia, Washington to being kettled by police during an unpermitted Chicago rally, perhaps no one captured the feeling of 2020 quite like British actor/comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. Between the Amazon acquired Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, and Netflix’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 (from Writer/Director Aaron Sorkin), Cohen’s timely performances have been available for streaming throughout the tumultuous year.
It might seem ridiculous to imagine that anyone could have been fooled by his Borat persona in 2020, but by shooting during the COVID-19 pandemic he finds a new relevancy. Then again, he’s fooling some of the same people who bought into the conspiracy theory that JFK Jr,, faked his death and is living as this guy?!
The follow-up to 2006’s Borat, Cohen’s Subsequent Moviefilm smartly paired him with Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova. As Borat’s daughter Tutar, Bakalova transforms into a “Fox News”-style right wing journalist and scored the infamous interview with (runner-up for 2020 actor of the year) former New York City Mayor Rudy Guilliani. Bakalova is rightly getting Oscar buzz for the role, and just scooped up a Golden Globe and SAG nomination for the role.
As anti-Vietnam activist/notable prankster Abbie Hoffman in The Trial of the Chicago 7, Cohen’s role feels more tailor-made for the moment than the sophomoric-level humor of Borat. With his stand-up scenes and court antics, Cohen nearly steals the movie out from under his other powerhouse supporting players —including top-notch performances by Mark Rylance (as Attorney William Kunstler), Frank Langella (as Judge Julius Hoffman), and Michael Keaton (as former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark).
With his performance as Hoffman, Cohen seems likely headed to a second Oscar nomination —his first nomination in an acting category. So far his only Oscar recognition has been for writing. While Cohen took home the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy), the Academy is notoriously hard on comedy performances. The Oscars did honor the first Borat in the Best Adapted Screenplay category, a nod which Cohen shared with 2019 Joker director Todd Phillips. Ultimately, the film lost to screenwriter William Monahan’s penning of Scorsese’s The Departed.
That Cohen was a performer uniquely positioned for 2020 should not have come as a huge surprise. Cohen is committed to his work with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on their “Stop Hate for Profit” campaign. While mostly focused on Facebook, the ADL campaign “ seeks to hold social media companies accountable for hate on their platforms”
He also made headlines for his November 2019 ADL speech. Cohen called social media, and specifically Facebook the “greatest propaganda machine in history,” and posited that “if Facebook were around in the 1930s, it would have allowed Hitler” to buy ads.
