Twenty years after Borat Sagdiyev first stumbled across America, Sacha Baron Cohen has done something he has never done before: said sorry. Appearing on Josh Horowitz’s podcast Happy Sad Confused, the actor offered a direct apology to the people of Kazakhstan, explaining that the character “has got nothing to do with Kazakhstan.”
Borat Was Never Really Kazakh
Cohen revealed that Borat started life as a BBC character with a different name who was supposedly from Albania. As the act moved between broadcasters, the name and nationality changed depending on who was paying, and he joked about pitching networks a “completely new” character from Moldova. Kazakhstan was eventually picked precisely because Western audiences knew almost nothing about it. He even admitted he has no idea what a real Kazakh accent sounds like.
From Lawsuit Threats to “Very Nice!”
Kazakhstan was not laughing at first. In 2005 the country’s Foreign Ministry threatened legal action against Cohen, and ahead of the 2006 release the government paid for a four-page advertising supplement in The New York Times promoting its achievements. The film never played in Kazakh cinemas, and Russia refused it a distribution license.
Attitudes softened over time. When Czech tourists were fined in 2017 for walking around Astana dressed as Borat, Cohen offered to pay the fine. In 2020, around the release of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Kazakh Tourism adopted Borat’s catchphrase “Very nice!” as its official slogan, even as Kazakh Americans protested the sequel.
Cohen has long argued the joke was never on Kazakhstan but on people willing to believe his absurd version of the country could exist. Two decades on, he has clearly decided an apology costs him nothing. For a character built entirely on cringe, it is a surprisingly sincere footnote.