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Oscar Nominee Hides in Plain Sight for Sneaky Late-Night Cameo

Sacha Baron Cohen was spotted in an unsuspecting place on “The Tonight Show.”

Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen is showing that he’s still got it on the cello.

The star, 54, who was the lead guest on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show on Wednesday, also performed discreetly with Beck during the episode. Baron Cohen appeared on the show to promote his controversial Ali G reprisal, Ali G: Who Iz I?, and didn’t mention the upcoming performance during his interview with Fallon.

Later in the episode, Baron Cohen can be spotted playing the cello in the eight-person string section during Beck’s “In the Night,” with no spotlight on him either before or after the song.

Baron Cohen, who earned Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar nominations for Borat (2006) and Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020), as well as a Best Supporting Actor nod for his role as Abbie Hoffman in The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020), has been under fire for his new Ali G film, which is out on Oct. 20 and which critics say “enforces racist stereotypes.”

Racism accusations have plagued the character since Baron Cohen debuted Ali G in 1998.

He wrote in a post on X to promote the Amazon MGM Studios film’s first trailer, “In an age where a comedian’s career can be ended by a single un-PC joke, I thought I’d play it safe and bring this guy back.” Complaints about the film’s character include the faux wannabe rapper wearing fake dreadlocks and a Rastafarian hat, and the character’s declaration to an interviewer that he aspires to be an “absent” father.

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After media bias organization NewsCord launched a campaign to get U.K. theaters to block the film, which now has over 56,000 supporters, Baron Cohen first responded with sarcasm. Dressed in elaborate prosthetics as a balding progressive activist, he said in a video to mock the backlash, “It’s so sad that Sacha Baron Cohen cannot come up with a new character, so I urge you to boycott this Ali G movie.”

He changed his tune in a cover essay for Time magazine on Tuesday, writing, “The fact that Ali G is outdated and problematic is the very reason I resurrected him. The world he’s returned to is, in many ways, worse than the one he left 20 years ago. All the prejudices my characters are designed to expose haven’t just lingered—they’ve metastasized.”

His cello performance on Wednesday also follows a lifetime of playing the instrument. The star credits his cello skills for his first TV appearance and told The New York Times in 2020 that he planned to continue playing and taking lessons from masters.

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Eboni Boykin-PattersonEntertainment Reporter

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