Sacha Baron Cohen revealed in an interview with The Telegraph that he is done playing Borat, the Jew-hating, whore-crazy Kazakhstani journalist he rose to world-wide fame portraying. Cohen said:
When I was being Ali G and Borat I was in character sometimes 14 hours a day and I came to love them, so admitting I am never going to play them again is quite a sad thing. It is like saying goodbye to a loved one. It is hard, and the problem with success, although it's fantastic, is that every new person who sees the Borat movie is one less person I 'get' with Borat again, so it's a kind of self-defeating form, really.
It's upsetting, but the success has been great and better than anything I could have dreamed of.
I wouldn't worry too much about running out of people to hoodwink with the Borat bit Sacha - I'm betting there are big pockets of America where not only has no one seen that movie, but they don't even know what the hell "movies" are.
I'm one of the people who adored Borat, but even I have to admit, that bit was really evil. Some of the stuff he did to those folks in that movie was demonic (handing the woman the napkin filled with his "poo" would have to be at the top). Plus, let's face it, the whole thing had more than a little elitist overtone to it. All right, let's be frank - it was way elitist. But, at least it was honestly elitist. I mean, what's worse - openly mocking the stupidity of "common people," or playing some cynical game where you romanticize them in order to hide the fact that you're really looking down your nose at them? Politicians pander to the masses all the time, but you know when they're in their backrooms smoking their cigars they all laugh about it and call us fools. All Cohen did by creating Borat was bring that shit out in the open. I'm not saying that makes him a good guy - frankly I think he's a bit of a turd - but at least he doesn't hide behind a bunch of pukey sentiment like Frank Capra and all those other old-fashioned leftist filmmakers who ranked pretending to care about people right up there with knowing a good wine and having taste in furniture.
(source)
