Getting singled out by Sacha Baron Cohen‘s most infamous character turned out to be good publicity, not an insult, for Ed Sheeran.
Cohen’s Ali G: Who Iz I?, due in theaters Oct. 23 via Amazon MGM, resurrects the fictional interviewer 24 years after his last film outing. The character narrates his own return in the trailer, listing everything that went wrong during his two decades away — wars, the pandemic, and Sheeran by name — before pivoting into the film’s premise: a “documentary” built from real interviews and unsuspecting public figures, in the spirit of Cohen’s late-’90s TV show.
Sheeran took the jab as an honor rather than a slight. “Tell 10-year-old me that Ali G would put him in his movie,” he wrote on Instagram. “Restecpa” — the character’s signature butchering of “respect,” first used in 2002’s Ali G Indahouse.
The film marks Cohen’s first time directing a feature himself, after previous Ali G and Borat projects were helmed by other directors. Production was kept under wraps entirely; Cohen reportedly showed up in character at Wimbledon this year without tipping off the film’s existence. The plot centers on Ali G discovering his girlfriend, played by Morgana Robinson, is pregnant after he resurfaces in the public eye.
Not every reaction has matched Sheeran’s good humor. The trailer has stirred real objections in the U.K., where critics and a cinema-boycott push have called out the character’s styling — dreadlocked wig, Rasta-style hat — as racial caricature that hasn’t aged well since Ali G’s original run.
Cohen built Ali G into a defining piece of British comedy before moving on to bigger disguises: Borat, Brüno, a Madonna video cameo, and eventually straight dramatic work in projects like The Trial of the Chicago 7 and Marvel’s Ironheart.
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