Great Success!

Sacha Baron Cohen’s Victims: All the People Who Fell for His New Prank Show

Here’s a running list of all the famous targets to fall for the irrepressible prankster’s act—including Sarah Palin, Corinne Olympios, and O.J. Simpson—along with their responses.
This image may contain Face Human Person Coat Clothing Suit Overcoat Apparel Ted Koppel and Sacha Baron Cohen
Ted Koppel, Sarah Palin, Dick Cheney and Sacha Baron Cohen.From left, by Peter Kramer/NBC, by Kris Connor, by Saul Loeb/Bloomberg, by Barry King, all from Getty Images.

As Sacha Baron Cohen’s new unscripted Showtime comedy, Who Is America?, preps for its premiere this weekend, the list of its known victims has already ballooned to an impressive size. Casualties include Sarah Palin, Dick Cheney, and now, Joe Arpaio, who on Thursday told Breitbart that Cohen duped him by posing as a Finnish comedian. The show itself is sure to be, at the very least, a fascinating watch—but these stories are also a Schadenfreude-filled treasure trove unto themselves.

And so here, for your perusal, is a full list of everyone tricked by Cohen on Who Is America?, organized from best to worst sport. (“Best” here is, of course, a relative term.)

Gretchen Rossi and Slade Smiley

Cohen’s anti-terrorism expert character, Erran Morad, paid Rossi and Smiley a visit to train them on how to ward off a potential home invasion. Although Cohen spent most of his time making fun of the Real Housewives stars, the two appear to have no hard feelings. In fact, Rossi herself said she was “honored” that Cohen even knew who they were.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, FL

The Republican representative from Florida can be seen declining to endorse one of Cohen’s characters’ lobbying efforts to get guns in the hands of children as young as three in Who Is America?’s premiere—but as he told the Daily Beast last week, he had no idea at the time that he was being put on. Thinking back to his conversation with the man who would turn out to be Cohen, Gaetz noted that he’s been to Israel many times in the past year, and so when someone allegedly from Israel reached out for an interview, he figured that Cohen’s alter ego was somebody Gaetz had met during one of his trips.

“I recall he would ask these questions and I would give answers and then he would just sit there, kind of like hoping for some advance of the moment,” Gaetz said. “But I have a very high tolerance for awkward moments. And so there were moments where we just sat there staring at each other.”

The congressman noted that he’s a huge Cohen fan, even doing a Borat impression during his interview with the Daily Beast. As for how he feels about being ensnared in this latest project, Gaetz seemed ecstatic: “I can’t wait to see it.”

Austin Rhodes

The Georgia-based conservative radio host told The Hollywood Reporter that he first received an e-mail from a producer who called herself Sarah Taylor and said she was working on a series called Bridging the Divide, aimed at “trying to find common ground in the midst of our deeply divided partisan times.” For this trick, Cohen styled himself as “Dr. Nira Cain,” a gender and women’s studies professor from Reed College.

Rhodes’s description of what happened next seems downright gleeful; he used terms like “ingenious” to describe the gambit, and admitted “it worked like a charm.”

“And what a sight he was!” Rhodes wrote for T.H.R. “When I first met this very tall, oddly dressed man, I said live on air: ‘Well, my goodness. You look like you are coming in straight from central casting. If I didn't know better, I would say you could be Fred Armisen in disguise.’ Well, he wasn’t Armisen, but I wasn’t too far off.”

During the interview, Cohen posed as an extreme-left academic, who took frequent bathroom breaks due to “intestinal distress.” (Rhodes said it was during this time that he suspects Cohen’s team fixed his makeup.)

“At some point, it occurred to me that the silliness of his remarks meant we were likely being ‘put on,’ but it never occurred to me to what extent,” Rhodes wrote. The reality of what happened didn’t sink in until later, when a listener called in and alerted Rhodes’s team that one of the fake documentary’s supervising producers, Todd Schulman, had a familiar name: “The listener told us that Schulman was the man who had secured his participation as a guest in the infamous ‘Southern dinner scene’ in the hilarious Cohen movie Borat,” Rhodes wrote. “A quick IMDb check revealed Schulman to be connected to virtually every project Cohen had starred in dating back to the Da Ali G Show, including Cohen’s new show.”

Rhodes said he isn’t too worried about how he’ll be portrayed on Showtime. As he pointed out, his show already broadcast their conversation live, and in full. “My biggest regret is not being able to shake his hand as Sacha Baron Cohen or interview him (as himself),” Rhodes concluded. “I hope we can set that up. I would say he owes me one.”

Ted Koppel

When Cohen’s team approached Koppel, they said they were working on a project titled Age of Reason, capturing “conversations with distinguished experts in science and public policy, highlighting the brightest and most reputable minds on today’s most important topics,” T.H.R. reports. Koppel figured out the ruse midway through his sit-down, and while he wasn’t as gleeful as Rhodes, he was good-natured and handled the moment professionally. Cohen showed up to the interview in Koppel’s home in a wheelchair, “with an oxygen tank hanging off one of the handles.” (He also used this costume to fool Sarah Palin, but more on that later.)

Koppel, whose wife has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (C.O.P.D.), tried to speak with Cohen’s character about that—but instead, Cohen quickly transitioned the conversation to arguing about the crowd size at Donald Trump’s inauguration, showing Koppel a photo of the crowd with a digital clock showing the time as 11 P.M. When Koppel pointed out that the time had to be wrong, since the picture depicted daylight, things got strange—and suspicious.

“He said maybe it was an eclipse. And I said if it were an eclipse, it would have been dark,” Koppel told T.H.R. “And he said maybe it was an eclipse of the moon and the sun eclipsed the moon. I said, ’Wait a second. The sun is many millions of miles away from the moon.’ At that point, I realized something was really wrong. And that’s when I said, ‘Guys, I don’t want to be rude; you’re guests in my home. But we’re done. Break down and time to leave.’”

Koppel said he never signed a release. Generally, he seems sanguine about the experience: “Everybody loves seeing well-known people get duped. I relish it, too, when it’s done well,” he said. Still, he added, “I think there’s a larger issue here and that is if there’s one thing we don’t need any more of in this particular era it’s people posing as documentarians. I think there’s enough skepticism to go around about people who actually are reporters, who actually are documentarians. And to undermine whatever tiny little bit of confidence might be left by pulling a stunt like this . . . maybe it will make for a good comedy show. I don’t know. But I don’t think it helps the overall atmosphere.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders, VT

The senator from Vermont was actually the first person seen sitting down with Cohen in character—in this case, with him playing the same wheelchair-bound right-winger character that tricked Sarah Palin and others. As the two discussed health care and the 1 percent, Sanders looked increasingly perplexed. He has not responded publicly to the show, perhaps because he is still trying to puzzle through what just happened.

Former state rep. Chip Limehouse, SC

Limehouse, a former Republican state representative from South Carolina, did not say or do anything particularly incriminating during his joint appearance with Atlanta rapper Bone Crusher—but he certainly didn’t come off well. And while he has not responded to his appearance on the show, the politician sure didn’t seem to be having much fun. He and Bone Crusher appeared for a joint interview for a “Heal the Divide” session—and more than anything, Limehouse appeared irritated by Cohen’s obnoxious liberal character, Dr. Nira Cain-N’Degeocello, who offered such conversational prompts as his belief that calling someone “black” is offensive.

Jill Stein

Like Sanders, Stein met with Cohen’s right-wing character—and was similarly perplexed by him. The two spent most of their time arguing about climate change—which seems like a wasted opportunity, given how many bizarre, anti-science positions Stein has defended in the past. Other missed opportunities include her own campaign’s ties to Russia. Either way, Stein didn’t say much of anything unexpected—and like Sanders, she has not responded since her segment aired.

Howard Dean

The former governor best known for the weird scream he made on the presidential campaign trail back in 2004 appeared in the same episode as Stein—and like Stein, he could not be duped into saying anything embarrassing. He mostly shrugged off Cohen’s conspiracy-theorist character’s bizarre and problematic suggestions, which included the idea that Hillary Clinton has a penis. And since the episode aired, he also appears to have shrugged off his appearance in silence, offering no public response.

Corinne Olympios

In Who Is America? Episode 2, Olympios found herself at the center of the show’s most bizarre prank yet. The Bachelor star already had a tumultuous 2017, thanks to a misconduct scandal involving her and DeMario Jackson’s intoxicated hookup. (An investigation by Warner Bros. found that no misconduct had taken place, and so after two weeks of halted production, the show began anew—without Olympios or Jackson, and with a new set of rules regarding drink limits and affirmative consent.) On Who Is America?, Cohen duped Olympios into participating in a photo shoot in which she wore a bikini under a hazmat suit, to be Photoshopped into a photo of relief workers during the Ebola crisis. She also gave an interview in which she, at the urging of Cohen’s character, lied about having helped save 6,000 children from being massacred at the hands of a warlord. And, finally, she participated in a fake P.S.A. urging people to sponsor child soldiers “so that they can be fighting well into puberty.”

According to Olympios, she feared for her life during the shoot—during which Cohen’s team allegedly sent her manager home and took away her phone. She [told V.F.] that she went along with Cohen and his team’s demands in the hopes of leaving the studio as quickly as possible. Although Olympios initially asked her attorney, Marty Singer, if she had any legal recourse—once she figured out what was going on, that is—she has since adopted a more positive outlook on the incident.

“I’m not looking at it as a negative thing,” Olympios told V.F. “I don’t hold animosities toward anyone . . . I’ve seen [Cohen’s] movies. I’ve seen Da Ali G Show. I think it’s funny. I’m excited to be a part of it, so we’ll see how it pans out. Hopefully, the world doesn’t hate me.”

When asked what she would tell Cohen if she ran into him in person, Olympios said, “I would say, literally, ‘L.O.L. Well done. But I hate you.’”

Rep. Joe Wilson, SC

The representative from South Carolina can also be seen, briefly, in the show’s premiere, in which he participates in the “Kinderguardian” P.S.A. to put guns in the hands of young children. As he recited on the program, “A three-year-old cannot defend itself from an assault rifle by throwing a Hello Kitty pencil case at it . . . Our founding fathers did not put an age limit on the Second Amendment.”

Wilson has responded to being duped, although it’s unclear if he feels one way or the other about it: “Public officials of both parties, like everyone, can be the target of practical jokes—and that’s what you’ve seen in this instance,” he said in a statement. “The request was to thank me for being a friend of Israel . . . I was targeted due to my strong support of Israel and my open-door office policy—and what I told this group was that I’ve worked to strengthen our relationship with Israel and that I will continue to work with President Donald Trump to do so.”

Dick Cheney

The former vice president was the first known victim of Cohen’s, as the show’s first promo included a clip of Cohen asking Cheney to sign his waterboarding kit—a request Cheney cheerfully granted, saying, “That’s a first; it’s the first time I’ve ever signed a waterboard.” Cheney hasn’t actually responded to the incident publicly yet, but we’re going to go ahead and assume that if he were to do so, his words would not be positive.

X content

This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.

Former rep. Barney Frank, MA

Cohen trotted out his right-wing character again to prank the former congressman from Massachusetts, but Frank was not having it. After a few minutes of arguing on topics such as whether or not Trump is the best president the United States has ever seen—you can guess where each of the men fell on that question—Frank got up and walked out of the interview. Cohen also argued that Pizzagate was real, and that the Access Hollywood tape that got Trump in trouble on the campaign trail was doctored. The question that prompted Frank to end the interview? “Do you agree that North Korea is controlling the news?”

O.J. Simpson

For all the pranks Cohen pulled, it was Simpson’s that he chose to end the series in its finale. In character as Italian playboy Gio Monaldo, Cohen sat down with Simpson to talk through a phony business deal—and almost immediately pivoted the conversation toward whether Simpson murdered Nicole Brown Simpson. Although Simpson repeatedly told Cohen to “stop” as he joked about killing women and wanting to murder his own wife, he laughed throughout the conversation. Naturally, Simpson also denied several times that he ever murdered anyone. As of now, he has not issued a public response to the show.

David Clarke

Remember the disgraced sheriff who was too extreme even for the Trump administration? He filmed an unboxing video with Cohen’s Finnish YouTuber character, OMGWhizzBoyOMG. As the two discussed the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally, Clarke said that Antifa is full of people who support disorder and the murder of police officers. OMGWhizzBoyOMG’s response? If only there were more guys like Clarke around in 1930s Germany, perhaps the fascists could have been better protected. Clarke has not responded to his appearance.

Corey Lewandowski

The same episode that featured Clarke also brought in Corey Lewandowski, one of Trump’s many former campaign managers. Unlike Clarke, however, Lewandowski found himself sitting with Cohen’s right-wing conspiracy-theorist character, Dr. Billy Wayne Ruddick Jr. The two talked about Charlottesville and the president, whom Lewandowski praised like he always does. Nothing Lewandowski said was particularly surprising, or any more outrageous than anything he’s said or done before. This is, after all, the guy who once responded to a story of a child with down syndrome being separated from his parents at the southern border by saying, “womp, womp.” Unlike many other guests, Lewandowski appeared cautious enough to avoid seriously implicating himself—which might be why so far, he hasn’t offered a response since his episode aired.

Former Senate majority leader Trent Lott

Trent Lott is another public figure—and former politician—who endorsed the fake “Kinderguardians” program, saying, “It’s something that we should think about America, about putting guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens . . . whether they be teachers, or whether they actually be talented children or highly trained pre-schoolers.”

Speaking with Mississippi’s Clarion-Ledger, Lott said of Cohen, “I don’t even know who this guy is. Who is this guy? I don’t even remember talking to him . . . Here we have a Supreme Court nomination, the president meeting with Russian, but this is what we’re talking about.

“I remember when I first went to Congress in 1973,” Lott added. “John Stennis was assaulted and shot in the abdomen by a robber. When I got in that morning, came out of the cloakroom, the first thing the press asked was not how is Sen. Stennis doing, but what my position on gun control was now. We didn’t know whether John Stennis was going to live or die at the time, but that was the question they had.”

Dana Rohrabacher

The Republican representative from California, who endorsed the same program in the faux P.S.A., issued a statement calling Who Is America? “false news.” In the statement, he claimed he was never directly pitched the idea of arming toddlers—and that therefore, the use of his endorsement is misleading. He called the show a politically motivated, “sick fraud.”

“Cohen’s people apparently used footage from an interview I submitted to earlier this year for a bogus Israeli television company supposedly celebrating the country’s 70th anniversary,” Rohrabacher wrote. “In that interview, which was not with Cohen, I spoke broadly of training young people at a responsible age in self-defense. At no time did I endorse training toddlers in handling guns. Nor was the idea even presented to me directly. If it had been, I would have rejected it. In school shootings, the standard response is ‘Run, hide, fight,’ in that order. My response was perfectly consistent with that. I love good satire, but good satire must reveal some basis in truth. This was fraud, a sick fraud at that, and its intention was to deceive the American people for political purposes.”

Joe Arpaio

The former Arizona sheriff—whom Trump pardoned last summer after he was convicted of defying a court order to halt racial profiling, and is now running for a seat in the U.S. Senate—told Breitbart that Cohen approached him under the guise of being a famous comedian from Finland. (He later described the character as a talk-show host from Sweden. He was told the conversation was a live interview, with over 2 million viewers.

Per Breitbart, “Arpaio said the saga began when he was contacted in the Fall of 2017 by two purported producers going by the names of Phil Simon and Corey Fielder. He said they told him that they were associated with a feature being sold to Showtime, and that the show had selected him as one of the twenty ‘most popular’ people in America.” One would think that would have been a hint that something was amiss, but alas, apparently Arpaio found the idea that he is one of America’s 20 most beloved people believable—and so, without a sheriff’s department staff to vet the request, he granted the interview.

“I signed some kind of contract before filming, which I have done numerous times, did not read all the info,” Arpaio told Breitbart. But he did notice one thing amiss during the sit-down: no one offered to powder his face. Cohen brought props, including model cars. During their conversation, which covered profiling, gun control, and illegal immigration, Arpaio said some of the language Cohen used, including words like “blowjob” and “golden shower,” made him “very uncomfortable.”

“I am not the type of guy who gets up and walks out,” Arpaio said. “I never walked out in thousands of interviews. I just take it. . . . I was kind of shocked. But I figured this is Finland and this is a famous comedian.” Per Vulture, Arpaio later told the Mike Broomhead Show, “I was really concerned that I walked into this trap.”

Sarah Palin

And here, folks, is where we get to the really bad sports.

Palin first confirmed she was among Cohen’s victims on Facebook, where she wrote, “I join a long list of American public personalities who have fallen victim to the evil, exploitive, sick ‘humor’ of the British ‘comedian’ Sacha Baron Cohen, enabled and sponsored by CBS/Showtime.”

According to the former Alaska governor, Cohen showed up for their interview dressed as a “U.S. Veteran, fake wheelchair and all. . . . The disrespect of our U.S. military and middle-class Americans via Cohen’s foreign commentaries under the guise of interview questions was perverse.” Palin implored Cohen and Showtime to donate the proceeds to a charity benefiting veterans, calling the project “truly sick.” And then, the kicker: Palin said Cohen’s team purposely dropped she and her daughter off at the wrong airport, refusing to take their calls as they missed their flight home to Alaska. “By the way, my daughter thinks you’re a piece of ****, Sacha,” Palin wrote. “Every honorable American Vet should feel the same.”

In response, Cohen created a new character named Billy Wayne Ruddick Jr., PhD and clarified that when he said he was “in the service,” he had been referring to the United Parcel. “I only fought for my country once - when I shot a Mexican who came onto my property,” Cohen wrote in character. “Coincidentaly [sic], just like our Great President, I was sadly prevented from joining the regular army on account of bone spurs bein discovered in my testies.”

On Friday, Palin brought her tirade to Good Morning America.

Jason Spencer

Who Is America?’s second installment featured the Republican state representative in, perhaps, its most humiliating segment yet: Cohen, in costume once again as Morad, told Spencer he was working on an anti-terrorism video. In the process of making the fake video, Spencer yelled the “N”-word when told that using a “forbidden” word that starts with “N” could draw attention in the event of an attempted kidnapping. He also exposed himself while “training” to scare terrorists—by running at them backwards with his bottom exposed. (As “Morad” said, terrorists fear that contact with a naked rear end could render them homosexual.)

Last week, Spencer threatened to sue Showtime if it aired the segment. On the day the segment aired, he gave a statement to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, saying that last year he had received numerous death threats in connection with his proposed legislation to ban the wearing of masks—which was designed specifically to target burqas. After the shooting on a congressional baseball game last year, Spencer said, “I was in such a poor state of mind that my wife and I also undertook marriage counseling with a licensed therapist during this time.”

“Sacha Baron Cohen and his associates took advantage of my paralyzing fear that my family would be attacked,” Spencer continued. “In posing as an Israeli Agent, he pretended to offer self-defense exercises. As uncomfortable as I was to participate, I agreed to, understanding that these ‘techniques’ were meant to help me and others fend off what I believed was an inevitable attack. My fears were so heightened at that time, I was not thinking clearly nor could I appreciate what I was agreeing to when I participated in his ‘class’. . . Sacha and his crew further lied to me, stating that I would be able to review and have final approval over any footage used.”

“I deeply regret the language I used at his request as well as my participation in the “class’ in general,” Spencer wrote. “If I had not been so distracted by my fears, I never would have agreed to participate in the first place. I apologize to my family, friends, and the people of my district for this ridiculously ugly episode. Finally, there are calls for me to resign. I recently lost my primary election, so I will not eligible to hold office next term. Therefore, I will finish the remaining five months at my post and vacate my seat.”

Joe Walsh

Palin might be mad, but former Illinois congressman and current conservative radio host Joe Walsh took his ire a step further, tweeting his support for Palin’s side of the story and calling for a boycott of Showtime as he admitted that he, too, had been tricked.

“I was invited to a pro-Israel dinner that honored defenders of Israel,” Walsh wrote on Tuesday. “The producers said they needed to film a pre-interview that would air as a part of Israel’s 70th birthday celebration.” Walsh said he had been led to believe that Tony Blair, Rupert Murdoch, Bono, and Steven Spielberg had also been honored. “I was truly honored to be named as a pro-Israel voice in America,” Walsh continued, but soon things went awry: “I was rushed to the studio, production was a mess, I sat down and we started talking pro-Israel stuff, Israeli defense, and then out of left field the interviewer starts talking about how children should defend themselves against terrorist attacks,” Walsh wrote, adding, “I understand Israel handles security very differently than how America handles security - interviewer showed several articles involving children stopping terrorists - stuff like that. They had me read off a teleprompter - I stopped and questioned their direction.”

“And just like that producers rushed me out of the studio as an apparent fight broke out,” Walsh concluded. “Strangest interview of my life - don’t think they spoofed me very much - but I did get this award, thanks @showtime.” He included a photo of a fake engraved plaque that said, “FOR SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE STATE OF ISRAEL.”

Roy Moore

One would think that calling for a boycott would fall safely into “worst-sport” territory, but that distinction actually belongs to Roy Moore, who threatened legal action in a lengthy statement. “I am involved in several court cases presently to defend my honor and character against vicious false political attacks by liberals like Cohen. If Showtime airs a defamatory attack on my character, I may very well be involved in another,” Moore wrote. “As for Mr. Cohen, whose art is trickery, deception, and dishonesty, Alabama does not respect cowards who exhibit such traits! It’s been a long time since I fought for my country in Vietnam. I’m ready to defend her again!”

It appears Moore was duped in the same way as Walsh: per his statement, Cohen’s team told the disgraced gubernatorial candidate that he was to receive an award for being a strong supporter of Israel. “I did not know Sacha Cohen or that a Showtime TV series was being planned to embarrass, humiliate, and mock not only Israel, but also religious conservatives such as Sarah Palin, Joe Walsh, and Dick Cheney,” Moore wrote.

For those wondering who else is about to be very, very mad at Sacha Baron Cohen, Who Is America? will premiere July 15 at 10 P.M. on Showtime.