'60 Minutes' Profiles Sacha Baron Cohen on Oct. 18

CBS's "60 Minutes" will air a profile of Sacha Baron Cohen on Oct. 18, five days before the premiere of his first feature as a director, "Ali G: Who Iz I?," on Oct. 23.

Ariel Levy conducted the interview in London. According to a clip obtained exclusively by Variety, the conversation centers on the mechanics of Cohen's undercover comedy — the method behind Ali G, Borat and Brüno, characters he has played against unsuspecting real-world targets since the late 1990s.

The clip offers at least one moment of genuine candor. When Levy asks whether Cohen brings anything of himself to his characters, he answers: "If I knew who I was, then I could answer that. But I don't know." He adds: "I mean, Ali G definitely, because in a way, at the age of 11, I was an Ali G of sorts."

That claim resists checking, like much of what Cohen says on camera. It is also, characteristically, delivered in a register where sincerity and performance are hard to separate — the very ambiguity the profile sets out to examine.

What does the interview cover?

The episode focuses on two threads, per Variety's report:

• The craft behind Cohen's brand of undercover comedy — how the characters are built and sustained in encounters with people who do not know they are being filmed with a comedian.
• The objectives of his satire — what the jokes are meant to expose.

Cohen also discusses his family. Asked about the household's sense of humor, he says his mother "was hilarious, but probably not intentionally so." He recalls: "She had such a distinct voice that everyone in my high school could imitate it. So everyone would go, 'Sacha, telephone.' Because that's what she would say when people would call me."

A directorial debut — with baggage

"Ali G: Who Iz I?" marks Cohen's debut as a feature director. He first played Ali G on Channel 4's "The 11 O'Clock Show," then on "Da Ali G Show" for Channel 4 and HBO. His global fame rests largely on Borat Sagdiyev, the fictional Kazakh journalist at the center of the 2006 mockumentary "Borat" and its 2020 sequel, "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm."

The satirical defense has limits, and Cohen keeps testing them. At the "Ali G: Who Iz I?" premiere, when Variety asked about the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger, he answered: "The only merger that's happening tonight is me and Sydney Sweeney's babylons." The remark, Variety reports, stoked outrage.

This is the pattern the "60 Minutes" profile will have to navigate: a performer routinely criticized for offensive statements made in character, who defends them as satire, and who continues generating controversy off-script. Whether Levy presses on that tension or stays with the craft remains to be seen until broadcast.

When and where to watch

The episode airs Oct. 18 at 7:30 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. PT, after CBS's NFL telecast. It will also stream on Paramount+ and later appear on YouTube.

For Cohen, the timing does the promotional work: a network profile, a streaming window and a YouTube afterlife, all landing in the week his directorial debut reaches audiences. Whether the film re-establishes Ali G as satire with a target, or as nostalgia for a character now in his third decade, is the question the Oct. 23 premiere will answer.