Sacha Baron Cohen Demanded Sex Scenes Cut From ‘Bruno’ To Please His Safta
Sacha Baron Cohen, possibly urging his grandmother to avoid the sex scenes in ‘The Spy’ Image by Getty Images
In “Brüno,” Sacha Baron Cohen’s 2009 follow-up to “Borat,” the title character and his boyfriend insert a series of household items into each other’s bodies, including but not limited to — an open champagne bottle, a spewing fire-extinguisher, and a hand-held vacuum.
When Sacha Baron Cohen’s grandmother saw “Brüno” in theaters, she saw none of this.
Baron Cohen, who plays legendary Israeli secret agent Eli Cohen in “The Spy” on Netflix right now, [told the New York Times in an interview that just hours before the mockumentary was to premiere in Los Angeles, he learned that his grandmother would be in the audience. “I called up [the distributors at Universal Pictures] and said: ‘Listen, you have to remove these three scenes from the movie,’” he told the Times.
“What do you mean? We’re screening it tonight! The premiere’s tonight!” Baron Cohen said distributors told him, panicking.
But he insisted. He claims that the scenes were cut, and the thousands who crowded into Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood watched a version of “Brüno” cut especially for the Baron Cohen family matriarch.
Baron Cohen’s maternal grandmother immigrated to Israel from Germany. His paternal grandmother was the British daughter of Eastern European immigrants. It’s not clear which woman Baron Cohen was talking about. What’s clear is this: one simply does not look at a woman who escaped Hitler and cobbled together a new life on foreign shores, and show her a video of a man launching himself into an anal cavity using a human slingshot. That’s just not how you treat your Jewish grandmother.
Baron Cohen said he ran into a “Brüno” distributor recently who told him that “the last 12 hours before the “Bruno” premiere were the worst of his life.”
Jenny Singer is the deputy life/features editor for the Forward. You can reach her at Singer@forward.com or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
