Sacha Baron Cohen apologizes to Kazakhstan for the Borat character for the first time

British actor Sacha Baron Cohen, on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, has for the first time officially apologized to the people of Kazakhstan for the Borat character, admitting that the character has no connection to the country. He explained how the image came about and recalled how he defended the film in 2006, when the Kazakh authorities threatened legal action and placed advertisements in Western newspapers.

Aziz KarimovFirst published on tafs uz 30 October 2026 at 20:302 min read

The key facts

Sacha Baron Cohen apologized to Kazakhstan for the Borat character for the first time
The actor admitted that the character has no connection to Kazakhstan and first appeared in a comedy show for the BBC
In 2005, Kazakhstan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs threatened legal action, and in 2006 the authorities placed advertisements about the country's achievements in Western newspapers

First apology for Borat

British actor Sacha Baron Cohen has for the first time officially apologized to the people of Kazakhstan for the Borat character from the 2006 film. According to Kun.uz, the statement was made on the Happy Sad Confused podcast in a conversation with American journalist Josh Horowitz, where the actor was also promoting his new comedy 'Ali Ji: Who Am I?' featuring the return of that character. 'For the first time, I want to apologize to the people of Kazakhstan, because Borat has nothing to do with Kazakhstan,' Cohen said.

How the character came about

The actor explained that the character first appeared in a comedy show for the BBC, and his name and nationality changed depending on which TV channel funded the show. When he was working on the next comedy, he needed 'a place nobody knows,' and he chose Kazakhstan — while, according to him, he did not even know what Kazakh pronunciation sounds like. 'It has nothing to do with Borat, but I still keep using it because my knowledge of Central Asian accents is very limited,' the outlet quotes the actor as saying.

From justifications to an apology

The apology is the first in the character's entire history, yet Cohen had to defend himself from criticism ever since the film's release. In a 2006 interview with Rolling Stone, he said: 'We are not laughing at Kazakhstan. We are laughing at people who believe that the Kazakhstan I portray actually exists.' The country's own attitude toward the film has changed over the years: in 2005, Kazakhstan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs threatened Cohen with a lawsuit and called his show a 'political order' aimed at discrediting the country internationally, and in 2006, on the eve of the feature film's release, the government paid for a four-page advertisement in The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune about Kazakhstan's successes in the 21st century.