EXCLUSIVE: Sacha Baron Cohen revealed after the Oscars that he had to sneak past Academy officials to transform himself into his Ali G alter ego, and now Deadline has the video proof. In this brief clip, seemingly taped with Cohen’s consent through a bathroom-stall door, the tuxedoed actor sits while his wife Isla Fisher applies his fake Ali G beard.
On Monday, Cohen told Good Morning Britain that Academy bosses — and, apparently, co-presenter Olivia Wilde — had no idea he was going to hit the stage as Ali G, and in fact had warned him not to pull any such stunts. “The truth is we actually had to sneak it in,” he told GMB. “The Oscars sat me down beforehand and said they didn’t want me to do anything out of order; they wanted me to actually just present it as myself.” He explained that Fisher faked a touch of food poisoning to get them into a special restroom. “What would I do without her?”
The Oscar officials had good reason to be suspicious. In 2012, Cohen — dressed in the military regalia of his fictional General Alladeen character from The Dictator — famously punked E!’s Ryan Seacrest on the red carpet by dousing him with what Cohen said was an urn-full of Kim Jong-il’s ashes. “It was his dream to come to the Oscars,” said Cohen-as-Alladeen to a deicdedly not-amused Seacrest. “Now if somebody asks you who you are wearing, you can say Kim Jung-il!”
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