The Man Behind The Mustache

The last major character Baron Cohen created was Bruno, a fashion reporter who got his start begging celebrities for interviews and, when they finally agreed, forgetting his questions. He made his debut during a piece on London Fashion Week for the Paramount Comedy Channel.

Eventually these characters would fuel a comedy empire. But not before Baron Cohen had given up on a career in entertainment altogether. He was fast approaching his five-year-window for making a living as a comic actor, and little had come of it. He was so broke he often had to wear Ali G's clothes when he went out.

"I was sitting on a beach in Thailand. It was four years and ten months since I'd graduated, and I had just come back from my brother's wedding in Australia," Baron Cohen recalls, wolfing down his sea bass. Though it is almost 10 p.m., he is running late to a meeting with his writing team to prepare material for appearances on The Howard Stern Show and Late Night With Conan O'Brien the next day. "I was thinking about staying in Thailand, because I was having this very nice life on a pound-fifty a day. And that's when I got a call from my agent saying there's this audition for The 11 O'Clock Show, this satirical late-night show, and they were looking for a host. I remember telling her that I didn't know if I wanted to come back. I had been rejected so many times that I didn't know if it was worth it."

He decided to go. And after his audition for host was greeted with a lukewarm reception, he decided to show them a tape of Alexi Krickler at a pro-fox-hunting rally in Hyde Park. They hired him on the spot.

And so it was that Baron Cohen's clips as Ali G on The 11 O'Clock Show developed a cult following, enabling him to spin his characters off into their own six-episode show, Da Ali G Show, and such a bona fide British phenomenon that it became nearly impossible to keep the character alive because everyone recognized him in the U.K. Introduced to American audiences after dressing as Ali G to play a limo driver in Madonna's "Music" video, Baron Cohen eventually resuscitated his characters by bringing them to the U.S. for two seasons on HBO. In addition, he took Hollywood roles as the voice of the king of the lemurs in Madagascar (mainly for the benefit of his nephews, who, he said, got scared midway through the premiere and walked out) and in Talladega Nights (at the request of Will Ferrell, an Ali G fan).

"I do have other characters, actually, that I want to start developing in the next six months," Baron Cohen says. "But I think it's going to be harder to do stuff in a reality setting. I'm just really looking forward to starting to do movies on set."

Late last month, Universal Pictures won a bidding war to develop a new Baron Cohen vehicle. Though the deal has been reported at $42.5 million for a film featuring Bruno, Baron Cohen says the figure is inaccurate, the deal is just to see if it's possible to develop the movie, and he's still not sure whether the film will be scripted or reality-based or whether it will feature Bruno or a different character. Right now, in fact, all Baron Cohen really knows is that he needs a vacation.

After Baron Cohen takes his last bite of sea bass, he excuses himself to spend the rest of Halloween night scripting the next day's television and radio appearances. However, he promises to call in a few days to continue talking.

A week later, shortly after returning from New York to his rented house in L.A., Baron Cohen makes good on that promise. He begins the conversation by saying that he's worried about a couple of the things he said in the interview, and hopes he isn't being too flippant in his comments about the Kazakh government.

"Sorry I've been so overcautious, but these things start to gather a lot of weight and importance when you put them off for years and years," he finally admits, referring to doing an interview as himself. "Literally, it was terrifying agreeing to do this."

Though he has cited in the past everything from legal reasons to efforts to maintain the believability of his characters, Baron Cohen offers another reason for staying out of the press himself. "I think that essentially I'm a private person, and to reconcile that with being famous is a hard thing," he admits. "So I've been trying to have my cake and eat it, too — to have my characters be famous yet still live a normal life where I'm not trapped by fame and recognizability."

"I guess I've been greedy." Pause. Sigh. Possible epiphany. "Maybe it's time to let go."

[From Issue 1014 — November 30, 2006]