Morgana Robinson on Playing 'Me Julie': Sacha Baron Cohen Would Not Let Her Break Character

Sacha Baron Cohen kept Morgana Robinson in character for eight hours a day on the set of "Ali G: Who Iz I," and he was not flexible about it. "He will not let you break character," Robinson told Variety. "So we're in character for eight hours. It's exhausting."

"Ali G: Who Iz I," released Oct. 23 by Amazon MGM, marks Ali G's first film in almost 25 years. Robinson, known for playing Pippa Middleton in "The Windsors," plays Julie — constantly addressed by Ali as "Me Julie" — who appears in the trailer heavily pregnant while Ali tells a doctor the bump is "probably wind or a big poo." Asked what kind of father he wants to be, Ali answers: "absent."

Robinson described the shoot as the most insane experience of her career. "He was training me like Rocky," she said. "All day long, running up and down those steps, all sweaty."

How did Robinson land the part?

Casting took roughly a year, with waves of auditions. The first tested whether candidates could improvise with Cohen and hold their own. The second threw them into a real interview with a real person. "They were looking for someone who could be funny, but also someone who could feel real," she said. "Otherwise, I guess they don't have a film."

Production ran in secrecy, mostly around Palm Springs. The cast stayed in random hotels, lying about their purpose. Robinson would leave her room with a bob and no baby bump, return pregnant, then appear in the bar with a glass of wine. "The concierge was just so confused," she said.

Who actually got duped?

Every person on camera, apart from Robinson, Cohen and the actor playing Ali's father, is real. Borat is famous in America; Ali G is not. The team scouted participants who passed a test of what — and whom — they knew. Robinson found the whole thing shocking: "It's like a magic trick."

The script changed daily. Ten minutes before scenes, runners would deliver rewrites. "There is no take two," Robinson said, which is what kept her from laughing. She "corpse(d)" (actor slang for breaking into laughter) twice during the entire shoot: once while peeling a banana with her toes, once during an unspoiled later moment. She bit her cheek and turned one break into a cough.

The film reaches extremes. Robinson's Julie gets kidnapped in the second act — "that's not even the bad bit" — and she confirms the film hits the level of Borat 2's notorious Rudy Giuliani hotel-room scene, though not with politicians.

Does the film mock the working class?

Critics have accused the film of outdated racist stereotypes and mocking the working class. In the U.K., there have been calls for cinemas to boycott it. Robinson found the online reaction hard. "I found it difficult. So I just stopped reading them entirely," she said, adding that the nasty comments stung.

She rejects the caricature charge. "I think she's a well thought out character," Robinson said of Julie. "She's got heart. She's got soul. She cares very much for her baby. She's got amazing morals." She called Julie "the heart of the film" and said the trailer was probably designed to provoke. The film itself, she argues, takes aim at Ali G's out-of-date views — dropping a dated character into today's society to see what survives. "A lot of questions have been asked, and I think they get answers."

Her verdict on the tone: "It's half-silly. It gets less silly as you go on." And it's "laugh out loud funny, but with a message."

Robinson, 44, is candid about the career math after years of cult British comedy that few abroad watched. "All you need to do is just go to Hollywood and get your fanny out," she said. "I've got to pay the mortgage."

She also suspects the joke's era is ending. "I think this will probably be the last one." Given that the film needed Americans who had somehow never heard of Ali G, that seems less a prediction than arithmetic.