Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat 2 took the U.S. by storm at the right time in October. The whole project certainly surprised Rudy Giuliani, and one of the more pleasant side effects is that the world’s now getting to know Maria Bakalova, who played Borat’s daughter, Tutar, in the movie. Bakalova beat out more than 600 other candidates for the role, which she originally feared — due to the secrecy of a project — might be a human trafficking operation. It all turned out well, though. Bakalova got acting tips from Cohen that she’ll use for a lifetime. As for her mom? She may never recover.
Alright, that’s an exaggeration, but as Bakalova related to James Corden earlier this week, her mother barely knew anything about the project. And after she watched the movie at home, there was an intense emotional outpouring. She could not stop crying because she found Tutar to be so “sad.” And an animated Bakalova demonstrated how her mom kind-of melted down over Facetime.
“Her eyes were full of tears,” Bakalova related. “She was crying for maybe two hours. Because she’s kind of a masochist, obviously, she watched it twice, and she was even more sad.” The actress then mimicked her mother crying: “I never seen something like Tutar, it’s so sad.”
What was the saddest part to mom… the Rudy scene or the one where Tutar opens a bottle with her “small hole”? We may never know. Bakalova did, however, reveal that one of her audition videos that she sent to the production included her uttering the following doozy: “My daddy is the best daddy in the whole flat world because he gives me cigarettes, he allows me to drink, and everything is amazing.”
No wonder she got the role, and she’s getting Oscar buzz, too. Maria Bakalova’s emergence might be one of the best things to happen in 2020.