Sacha Baron Cohen sat nearly five hours in a toilet stall at the 2020 CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) until former Vice President Mike Pence was about to appear on stage.
Professional babysitter Jeanise Jones was paid $3,600 to appear in the movie, but she, as most other people who appear in the film, was under the impression that it was a serious documentary and had no idea that Sacha Baron Cohen and Maria Bakalova were playing made-up characters. She later praised the performance of Bakalova and admitted she had her fooled.
Sacha Baron Cohen spent a full five days with conservatives Jerry Holleman and Jim Russell without breaking character as Borat.
Tutar is actually speaking Bulgarian, the native language of the actress Maria Bakalova, and Borat seems to understand her perfectly. Meanwhile, Borat's sons, Doctor Yamak and the Kazakh premier are played by Romanian actors, who say their lines in Romanian and Nursultan Tulyakbay is played by Croatian actor who says his lines in Croatian. This is a recurring joke from Borat: Studio culturale sull'America a beneficio della gloriosa nazione del Kazakistan (2006) where Borat speaks Hebrew while his producer Azamat speaks Armenian but they seemingly understand each other. This satirizes that American audiences can't notice the differences in foreign languages.
The film's creators were sued for fraud after including an interview with Holocaust survivor Judith Dim Evans. Evans died before the film's release, but her heirs brought the lawsuit alleging that she did not consent to the commercial use of her likeness. Sacha Baron Cohen, who dedicated the film to her memory, claimed that he broke character to reveal to Evans that the piece was a bid to reduce her concern about the anti-Semitic comments that Borat makes. The lawsuit was dismissed on October 26, 2020.