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Anya Taylor-Joy can do more with just a stare than most actors can with a ten-page monologue. That’s the thought that continuously runs through my head while watching the actress decimate grown men over a chessboard during the seven-episode run of Netflix’s upcoming drama mini-series, The Queen’s Gambit.

As Beth Harmon, an orphan with a troubled past who begins as a chess prodigy and grows to become one the most talented and controversial players in Scott Frank’s re-working of the Walter Tevis classic novel, everything rests with Taylor-Joy. More specifically, with her face. It’s there we see the aftermath of a cutting knight-rook combo, the desperation of a Sicilian Defense, the turmoil after being forced to resign to a steely Russian opponent decades older than her. We see things other than chess in Taylor-Joy’s face too — like her character’s addiction to alcohol and tranquilizers, one that begins at a young age; her loneliness, her otherness as a woman competing in a male-dominated space in the ’60s, her genius, her madness.

Taylor-Joy’s mastered that non-verbal style of acting – it’s what’s elevated her performances in films like Autumn de Wilde’s Emma, Robert Eggers’ The Witch, and M. Night Shyamalan’s Split – but she doesn’t rely solely on it for The Queen’s Gambit, instead carrying the series with the quiet charisma and solid assuredness of someone who’s discovered what she’s supposed to be doing. The “how” of doing it though continues to evolve, and when we caught up with Taylor-Joy to talk about the show and her insane schedule — she’s back with Eggers filming The Northman, she just finished a stint on Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho, and she’s about to board George Miller’s Furiosa spin-off — the actress describes her rise to fame as a kind of homecoming and, maybe, a lesson in setting boundaries.

Even for someone who knows nothing about chess, this show was more than a bit addictive. What about this story hooked you?

I heard that Scott Frank wanted to talk to me about a project. There was no script, but there was a book. I was like, “Oh, Scott Frank. Incredibly talented. I’m down.” I also love to read. I inhaled that book so quickly and there was something… To use like the 2020 expression, I felt seen by this character. I was just like, “Whoa, okay. I really think I can tell this story with sensitivity and empathy.” Then Scott and I met. I ran to the meeting, and I don’t run anywhere. I was so excited that I had to run to meet this man. As soon as the door was opened, I was like, “It’s not all about chess and she needs to have red hair!” Scott was like, “I agree.” It was a very passionate, breathless discussion the first time that we met. I have to say, he, as a filmmaker and as a person, is incredible because we decided that we were going to do this, knowing that I would have played two characters prior to that, with basically no time off. I was going to do Emma, have a day off, do Last Night in Soho, have a day off, and then arrive to play Beth. Scott was so respectful, so cool and so caring for me as an individual, that I can’t imagine a better collaborator.

Beth is a genius, but her talent makes her “other,” and I think the nature of her lifestyle just adds to that. Did you identify with that part of her?

Big time. I think her inherent loneliness is the first thing that I was like, “Oh, this hurts to read, but also, I get it.”

I mean, we’re all a bit lonely right now.

Oh, absolutely. But I also think most people are inherently lonely it’s just, a lot of people don’t talk about it. Which is why I’m the first to stick up my hand and be like, “I was very lonely as a child.” I just had this deep faith and desire that there was a world one day where I was going to be able to inhabit it, I was going to have something to contribute, and the people around me would like me for the way that I was. I think Beth finds that in chess and I was lucky enough to find it in art. It did feel that way. I stepped onto my first set and I was like, “Oh, it all makes sense. This is where I’m supposed to be. This is where I feel safe, wanted, and cared for.” I think I love the scene where Beth sees a professional chess tournament for the first time, because she’s like, “Oh my God, I found my people.”

You’ve kind of mastered the art of non-verbal acting over the years, and that really comes into play here. How do you tap into such a complicated character while also making note of all these moves you need to be making.

I’m not a chess prodigy. I did not know how to play chess prior to this. I think one of the best pieces of advice I ever got with acting, particularly in screen acting, is if you’re having the right thoughts, then you do the right things. I am not an actor that goes and — with all respect to the actors that this works for, it just happens not to work for me — I don’t learn my lines at night, reading into a mirror, seeing the way that my face moves. I just learn the lines in the morning, connect the thoughts, and then if you’re having the thoughts your body naturally does what it’s supposed to do. So if the thought is, “Oh, you have no idea that I’m about to massively screw you right now with this rook move,” your body naturally gives off all those signals. It makes it super fun. The game of chess is like a mini-war on a board, so it makes sense that if you stick a camera between the two people that it’s going down with, it’s tense and exciting. Then it’s performed and you get the added kick of punctuating your feelings with chess moves and that feels great.

So how good at chess are you now?

I had to have a theoretical understanding of chess, just because I know what it means to the people that really care about it. As somebody who applauds passion, I didn’t feel like I could waltz on set knowing nothing about chess and just being like, “I’m going to pretend like I know what I’m doing.” I do think knowing the theory of chess and then being able to execute it for a full game are two very different things. I can possibly write a good little booklet on chess but I’m not the best player there ever was. For the process of filming, the number of games, the number of sequences that I had to learn… I think the second day I just went up to Scott and I was like, “You have to show me these games five minutes before we play them. Let me log them into my short-term memory. I’ll do it. Then I can throw that away and act,” because otherwise you just get really confused and you never sleep. Unfortunately, as human beings, we need to do that.

It’s almost like memorizing a dance or fight choreography then?

Completely. Thomas [Brodie-Sangster] and I had the best time in the speed chess matches because chess is historically a solitary game. But when you’re learning sequences, you have a dance partner. You cannot move until he moves. So we both felt very chuffed and very proud of ourselves whenever we would finish those sequences, because it was like, “Oh, we achieved something together. You were great. I was great. This was great.”

Did you ever get competitive with the guys off-set, because, from this show, it seems like chess can get very combative?

Again, in terms of playing the game for real, no. Scott Frank is very competitive. We played chess between takes on a couple of days and then we were like, “We need to stop. We need to focus on what we’re doing because we’re getting very aggressive towards each other.” [Laughs]

Right. Yelling at each other over a chessboard might not be the best for on-set morale.

Yeah. With Thomas, I didn’t realize I couldn’t be competitive about speed chess, but I can, and that was pretty fun. Just trying to always be the one that was quicker. I think that really worked for Benny and Beth’s relationship as well, because when they first meet it’s the first time that they’ve each met their intellectual equal, and that makes them both really excited and really ticked off at the same time. So yeah, that was really fun to play with.

It’s also nice that this is a show about a woman competing in a male-dominated space and it doesn’t constantly focus on her gender. It feels more progressive than you’d expect.

It was one of the things I loved most about her when she entered my life. She was like this weird space creature that wasn’t handed a book like, “You’re a girl, this is what you’re allowed to want.” She’s genuinely baffled by the fact that people keep being like, “This is really extraordinary that she’s a girl,” and she’s like, “No, I’m really, really good. That’s the bit that’s extraordinary about me.” I love getting to play that because we’re still dealing with it now. It’s going to take a long time before we figure it out. In the sixties, it was worse. So I love being able to portray a character that… I guess it’s not that she doesn’t see gender, it’s that she just doesn’t think it’s the most incredible thing about her. I hope we’re moving towards a society that doesn’t dictate what dreams you’re allowed to have or not have based on your gender, or what you identify as. I hope that’s where we’re moving to. I hope that audiences, in watching this story, get lulled into the same way of thinking and it becomes less about, “Oh, let’s watch this girl chess prodigy kick-ass,” and it’s more about, “Wow, this human is very talented and we care about her as an individual and not because of her gender.”

You’ve been incredibly busy over the last couple of years, and you just signed on to George Miller’s Furiosa spin-off. You mentioned realizing the need for sleep with this project. Have you learned how to take care of yourself a bit better because of this series?

You really hit the nail on the head there. I learned that with Beth. In January, I was like, I might need to actually eat a vegetable if I’m going to survive this year. That might be something that I need to do. Then by the time I got to play Beth, it was like… I’d never existed on much sleep, and for the first time ever, I was like, “It is 8:00 p.m. I am up at three. I am going to bed. I cannot talk to another individual. I need to sit at home with my thoughts, otherwise, I’m not going to be able to play this character correctly.” Having that enforced on me, as a way for me to play the character, was a really clever way that my brain taught me about boundaries. Because I could do it for Beth, but I hadn’t been able to do it for myself before. Now post-Beth, I’m like, “Oh, I really love people. I am an extroverted introvert, but I require time to read and time to be by myself in nature. If I don’t have that, I’m not as good a friend as I want to be.” It’s what people talk about on the airplane: you have to put on your own oxygen mask first if you’re going to help anybody else. I think Beth taught me about the oxygen mask.

Netflix’s ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ premieres on Oct. 23rd.

At one point in Sacha Baron Cohen’s follow up to Borat (2006), Borat Subsequent Movie Film (aka Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan), the pandemic hits and our hero ends up holed up in a remote (yet spacious and well appointed) cabin with two guys, who tell Borat earnestly that Hillary Clinton kidnaps children to drink their blood and harvest adrenochrome. It’s a scene that makes us ask an internal question we probably never did the first time around: who is performing for who here?

In the first installment, on the heels of HBO’s Da Ali G Show, the American version of the already wildly popular guerilla prank show Cohen had been doing in the UK, the boundaries between staged and spontaneous were already a little blurry. What must he have told these people to get them to appear? But for the most part we could trust that people’s reactions to this simple, backwards foreigner from a mysterious former Soviet Stan were more or less genuine. Cohen played on the West’s casual assumptions about the former Eastern Bloc (mixed with genuine ignorance and trusting instincts) to expose their receptiveness to misogyny, superstitious Anti-Semitism, and poop — but also their general friendliness and willingness to help a fellow man. Getting an entire mega church to participate in a call and response by calling out “Do Jesus love my retard brother?” was a signature bit (along with the tamer but funnier, “Do Jesus love my neighbor Nusultan Tuliakhbar? —Nobody love my neighbor Nusultan Tuliakhbar!”)

This exposure of ugly strains in the national character was what got the most ink, even if it wasn’t the number one goal — Cohen is a humanist anarchist and subversive by nature, but I suspect that for the former student of French master-clown Philippe Gaulier (yes, Cohen attended a “prestigious French clown school”), laughs and spectacle trump politics, if only slightly. The thrill of discovering something new about our fellow man, good or bad, was a big part of Borat‘s appeal. You never quite knew what was going to happen. Whether it be a rodeo crowd’s half-cheering reaction to “I hope George W. Bush kills every man, woman, and child in Iraq, down to the lizards!” or a driving instructor who mostly just treats a horny Borat with kindness, good advice, and straightforward humanity. (“Look, you can’t do that here, okay?”)

In Borat Subsequent Movie Film, whose ostensible plot is about a now-disgraced Borat Sagdiev trying to deliver a famous chimp porn star to Mike Pence as a gift from the Kazakh premier, not only has casual racism and misogyny in public become far less shocking, but it’s much, much harder to tell who is performing for the camera. In the 14 years since the first movie, the kind of conservatism Cohen seems to delight in exposing has gone from at least somewhat ideological to almost entirely performative. It was always fairly hypocritical, but these days absolutely no one is buying that God and country crap from people lining up behind a thrice-divorced WWE heel in a billowy suit whose disrespect of veterans has spawned at least five separate controversies. What once may have at least seemed like genuine belief is now transparently just a cudgel.

The footage of Cohen that leaked out prior to release saw him performing at a right-wing rally. In the movie, we can now see Borat (disguised as a character called, amazingly, “Country Steve”) surrounded by people open carrying assault rifles, walking around in military fatigues, clad in your bog-standard pro-Trump, anti-Dem t-shirts, and other regalia. It feels, as it almost always does these days, more like a group of people LARPing in a park than a political gathering. Politics has goals and desired outcomes. These people are merely solidifying identity. Trump is a television character to them, and they enjoy the show. They bond over their shared enjoyment of the show.

There is no ideology beyond antagonism toward a perceived enemy — which is to say, I doubt any of them would even be there without the possibility of libs to trigger. Which is further to say, they’re all doing a Borat bit now, playing a character to get a rise out people or to prove a point. The people Sacha Baron Cohen delights in provoking have spent the last 14 years desperately trying to become the provocateurs.

So when two “country” looking guys (who like almost all supposedly working-class Trump fanatics appear to be driving around in $40,000 trucks) try to explain how and why Hillary Clinton harvests children, the shock isn’t so much “wow I can’t believe someone believes this” it’s “how far are these guys willing to go for the bit?”

What did Borat tell these guys that made them want to host him at their house and sign the waiver? Surely it was more than just them being nice. These kinds of questions require answers more in 2020 than they did in 2006. They don’t seem like bystanders anymore. Meanwhile, when Borat goes to a debutante ball at one point, I could’ve sworn I saw one of the guys from the first Borat‘s Southern society dinner there (the guy on the far right in this picture). What the hell did they tell that guy to get him to participate twice? I’m genuinely curious.

Cohen is still the same genius he was before, a David Blaine character who shrinks from no celebrity or situation, who will not only put himself in legitimate danger for a bit (literally doing comedy at the point of a gun, and not for the first time), but always seems to have the perfect one-liner queued up for maximum effect — like assuring Rudy Giuliani of his “tight back pussy.” Mostly it’s the world that has changed. For that and a handful of other reasons (like that Borat is too famous to do bits as Borat now, and not wanting to repeat himself, and probably a COVID-abbreviated shooting schedule) Cohen has to work a little harder for laughs now. Or even for surprise. He was always at least as much a social experiment as he was a comedian and these days staging a social experiment is complicated by the feeling that we’re all living in a social experiment all the time.

There’s also the fact that decent-sized chunks of this movie don’t even have Cohen in them. His daughter, Sandra Jessica Parker Sagdiev-Drummond (played by Maria Bakalova) does the heavy lifting in two or three scenes as Borat’s bumpkin daughter, who dreams of “a fancy wife cage” like Melania’s and has been schooled to fear the teeth in her vagine. That she can create situations every bit as awkward as Cohen, the kind that make you cover your eyes but keep watching, is a testament to her poise and bravery. It takes a special kind of person to be able to see those situations through. Yet she’s not quite Sacha Cohen — lacking the same sense of perfect one-liner — because… well, no one is.

When Borat Subsequent Movie Film is on, it’s as transfixing as ever. You don’t watch it like you would comedy, expecting regular and consistent laughs. You watch it like you would porn, where you know all the wonder and spontaneity are mostly staged but remain transfixed regardless, anticipating those fleeting moments when the mask slips off and a character’s true feelings are revealed. There are longer stretches where that doesn’t come (heh), but that’s mostly okay. Just as before, Borat uncovers craziness and kindness in almost equal measure — one moment with a Holocaust survivor in a synagogue, in particular, was so sweet (contrived or not) that it almost brought me to tears.

Yet if Borat Subsequent Movie Film feels scattered in comparison to its predecessor, that’s perhaps because the American body politic isn’t nearly as coherent as it once was. It’s hard not to feel like Walter from The Big Lebowski looking back on the Bush years — substituting neocons for “the man in the black pajamas,” a “worthy f*ckin’ adversary.” Say what you will about the tenets of vulgar imperialism, dude, at least it was an ethos. Turns out, it’s a lot harder to expose a belief system that is essentially nihilistic.

‘Borat Subsequent Movie Film’ is available October 23rd on Amazon Prime. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

Miley Cyrus has been teasing a new era for some time now, and finally, she has offered concrete information about her next album: Plastic Hearts will be released on November 27.

Cyrus shared the album art on social media, which Pitchfork notes looks similar to album covers by punk band The Plasmatics, like their 1980 debut New Hope For The Wretched. She also shared an emotional note about the album, in which she addresses her house burning down in 2018.

Read Cyrus’ full statement below.

“If you’re reading this know that I f*cking LOVE + APPRECIATE you on the deepest level. I began this album over 2 years ago. Thought I had it all figured out. Not just the record — its songs/sounds but my whole f*cking life. NO ONE checks an ego like life itself.

Just when I thought the body of work was finished it was ALL erased. Including most of the music’s relevance. Because EVERYTHING had changed.

Nature did what I now see as a favor + destroyed what I couldn’t let go of for myself. I lost my house in a fire but found myself in its ashes.

My collaborators still had most of the music that was burned up in journals/computers filled with songs for the EP series I was working on at the time. But it never felt right to release ‘my story’ (each record being a continual autobiography) with a HUGE chapter missing. If it were a chapter in my book I guess I would call it — ‘The Beginning’ which usually when something is over we call it ‘The End.’ But it was far from that.

In triumph + gratitude I present to you my 7th studio record, Plastic Hearts. To be released 11/27/2020.

Well that’s ‘the plan’ anyway — Had one of those before…. But seriously — it’s really coming. Think you’ll love it — if you don’t — F*ck you.”

Plastic Hearts is out 11/27 via RCA. Pre-order it here.

Machine Gun Kelly received good amount of flack for his sudden change in sound after the rapper-turned-rocker jumped into the pop-punk lane for his latest album, Tickets To My Downfall. Whether the comments were warranted is up for debate, but none of that may matter to MGK as the project helped him earn his first No. 1 album. Riding high off the success of his fifth full-length release, the Cleveland native returns with a fiery visual alongside Halsey for their “Forget Me Too” collaboration.

The visual finds the two artists, literally drowning at times, in their post-breakup feelings and taking out their frustration on a number of items in the home the video takes place in. Despite many attempts to move on and continue their respective single lives, MGK and Halsey fail to accomplish this without running into thoughts of each other. Finally, after staying clear of each other for the better part of the video, MGK and Halsey run into near the video’s end. In a fit of rage, they take out their anger toward each other in a heated vocal match, one that finds Travis Barker rocking out on the drums behind them.

Machine Gun Kelly previously spoke on his shift in sound shortly after the release of Tickets To My Downfall. “I would like to normalize how we think about doing multiple types of music,” he said in an interview with HipHopDX. “I didn’t ‘switch genres’; I’m versatile, and the wall isn’t boxed in. … Limitations would cause you to believe that, because I’ve put out four albums that are rap, I shouldn’t put out a fifth album that’s not rap.”

Watch the “Forget Me Too” video above.

Jake Tapper’s response to the final presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden was simple: though the debate itself was far more civil than the first debate in late September, the rhetoric of the Trump campaign in the last days of the campaign will get a lot worse.

Tapper issued a warning to people on CNN on Thursday night in the aftermath of the debate, calling Trump’s campaign “disgusting” and calling it the “single most negative, sleazy campaign in American history.” The comments were in relation to largely the campaign Trump has ran online, both through his own Twitter account and surrogates elsewhere but also when speaking during debates and campaign appearances.

Tapper started by referencing some “code words” that Trump “spews” that make QAnon believers get excited, and also took a shot at Fox News host Sean Hannity in the process, then focused on the misinformation campaign that’s circulated online in various forms this election season.

“The president, even though he learned into it a little bit, he really didn’t go full bore. Which I think was wise, or at least not stupid,” Tapper said before bluntly criticizing the Trump campaign overall. “He’s running the single-most negative, sleazy campaign in American history for a major-party candidate.”

Tapper said the history here is clear: the disinformation from pro-Trump people and websites, and the rhetoric they’ve leaned into as they attempt to find things to criticize Biden about, has blown away any norms we’ve grown accustomed to in modern politics.

“It used to be people would be negative, and you could always say, ‘Well, don’t forget the campaign against (Michael) Dukakis’ or historians like (Michael) Beschloss could say ‘In 1800 Jefferson had pamphleteers who would accuse John Adams of being a hermaphrodite or whatever,” Tapper said. “The campaign that Trump and his allies in the media and members of his family and the Trump aligned-websites and such are leveling, with charges so heinous I’m not even going to say them. Just nonsense, crap, tied into QAnon, tied into Pizzagate, tied into the worst things you could say about a person. With no evidence, just completely made up is so disgusting and so beneath what this election should be.”

Tapper ended with a warning: what you’re likely to see online and in social media in the final days of the campaign will only get worse, and people need to be “ready” for what will show up on “their grandparents’ Facebook feeds.”

“I just want viewers at home to be ready. Because all of their grandparents’ Facebook feeds and all of the Twittersphere — it’s going to be so heinous over the next 11 days. And people should just be prepared for it,” Tapper said. “The president leaned into some of it, gently into some of the sleazier baseless allegations and accusations, not the worst. But it’s gonna get a lot worse.”

Social media has changed politics and how people gather news so considerably in recent years that it’s difficult to keep track of how much has changed. Which is why it’s interesting to see a member of the news media address disinformation like this, and its unprecedented nature, in real time as an election unfolds.

Van Jones later credited Tapper’s statement about the matter, calling it “disgusting” and pointing out that “good people” are trading in rumors and that spreading disinformation needs to stop. That last part happening seems unlikely as ever, but hearing it called out on national television is certainly something new, too.

For three consecutive years, Saweetie has inserted herself into the conversation for the song of the summer. In 2018 she entered the game with her “Icy Grl” single, one she followed up on with “My Type” in 2019. Keeping the streak alive, the Cali-native made some noise this past summer with “Tap In.” Unfortunately, the pandemic seized the true moment and overall exposure the song deserved but pushing ahead in her career, Saweetie returns with a new single with Jhene Aiko.

Bringing the warmth and carefree spirit of their California hometowns with them, Saweetie and Jhene Aiko unveil their new single, “Back To The Streets.” The song finds the two artists treating their love interests like a leased vehicle, enjoying the time they spend with them and making the most of it, all to return it and move on the to next new thing. The track is duo’s second collaboration after Jhene joined Saweetie’s “My Type” remix last year.

The “Back To The Streets” track is just the latest guest feature Jhene has done in 2020. This year, the Chilombo singer has appeared on Ty Dolla Sign’s “Be Yourself,” Big Sean’s “Body Language,” John Legend’s “U Move, I Move,” and Kehlani’s “Change Your Life.”

Listen to “Back To The Streets” in the video above.

Saweetie is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Ahead of her Saturday Night Live hosting debut on October 24, Adele and HER took part in a promotional video for SNL just a couple of days ahead of the show’s live taping. Joined by cast member Kate McKinnon, the video finds Adele using the opportunity to show off her American accent.

The result was a really good attempt, one that almost makes you forget her usual British accent. On the other hand, McKinnon then tried her hand at a British accent, but failed to stick the landing. The trio also pokes a little fun at HER’s stage name in the SNL teaser.

Adele revealed she would host the upcoming episode of SNL in an Instagram post that found her beyond excited at the impending opportunity. “Bloooooody hellllll I’m so excited about this!! And also absolutely terrified!” Adele exclaimed in the post. “I’ve always wanted to do it as a stand alone moment, so that I could roll up my sleeves and fully throw myself into it, but the time has never been right. But if there was ever a time for any of us to jump head first into the deep end with our eyes closed and hope for the best it’s 2020 right?” She also showed how excited to watch HER perform on the late-night show.

“I am besides myself that H.E.R will be the musical guest!! I love her SO much I can’t wait to melt into a flaming hot mess when she performs, then confuse myself while I laugh my arse off in between it all.”

You can watch the promo video above.

Following her Thank U, Next album in 2019, Ariana Grande told fans thanks she would “be chilling a lot more next year,” which was reasonable as she was just a year removed from her 2018 Sweetner release. Despite this claim, Ariana began to tease new music in August and soon after, she returned to say her sixth album would arrive at the end of October. True to her promise, Ariana begins the campaign for the album with her new single, “Positions.”

Paired with a matching visual, the video kicks off with Ariana at the head of a table at the White House for what looks like an important meeting. Emphasizing her message on the song, the video then transitions to present her in the kitchen as a chef while she promises to her lover that she will continue “switchin’ the positions for you.”

Grande first teased the album after celebrating two-year anniversary of Sweetener in January. Prior to an Instagram post that said, “happy second birthday to my favorite baby sweetener,” Grande shared one that jokingly teased the title for her upcoming album. “Was holdin my tiddies up with the other arm thats cropped out,” she said under a photo of herself wearing a bra. In the comments of that photo, she added, “ag6 title.”

If her new single tops the singles chart, it will be Grande’s third track in 2020 to reach No. 1. Her first chart-topping track of 2020 came with Justin Bieber on their “Stuck With U” collab. Her next No. 1 came by the way of her “Rain On Me” collaboration with Lady Gaga, which appeared on Gaga’s Chromatica album.

You can listen to “Positions” in the video above.

Rudy Giuliani’s shenanigans captured on film in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm hit the media before the film hit streaming services, which gave Sacha Baron Cohen the opportunity to use it in a promotional tweet about the movie’s release.

Giuliani, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and a man who has tried to make the news for another high-profile reason this week, was caught on film in a compromising situation with the Baron Cohen character, who Giuliani may or may not still believe is a real person. While the rest of America will be able to see the scene for themselves on Friday, Baron Cohen tweeted a defense of Giuliani on Thursday night that poked fun at this appearance in the film, in which the former mayor of New York City appeared in a hotel room that Baron Cohen’s Borat burst into and claimed the person he was with was an underage girl.

“I (am) here to defend America’s mayor, Rudolph Giuliani,” said Baron Cohen, in character as Borat. “What was an innocent sexytime encounter between a consenting man and my 15-year-old daughter have been turned into something disgusting by fake news media.”

Borat makes a gesture with his hand, seeming to extend his nose and continuing a trope he often referenced in his first Borat movie. Then he issued a very tongue-in-cheek warning to anyone who might try to prank Giuliani in the future.

“I warn you, anyone else try this and Rudolph will not hesitate to reach into his legal briefs and whip out his sup-penis.”

Given the response on social media word of Giuliani’s appearance in the film got, it makes sense that Baron Cohen would address the scene directly in a video that doubles as an ad for the movie. Let’s just hope that Giuliani’s “legal briefs” are the only thing we see in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, and nothing more graphic.

After the second scheduled presidential debate of the year was canceled after president Donald Trump declined to hold the debate virtually following his coronavirus diagnosis. On Thursday, however, Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden took the stage once again for the final debate of the year. Unlike the first debate from late September, which was riddled with negative comments and left an ill taste in the mouths of many voters, Thursday’s night debate erred on the calmer side of things. Sharing their reactions to the debate, a number of names from the music world jumped on Twitter to deliver their thoughts.

Lady Gaga stressed the importance of voting saying, “YOU MUST VOTE. VOTING IS ESSENTIAL,” while Big Sean expressed his frustration with Trump and Biden’s inability to directly answer a question. “Politicians just can’t answer a question straight?!” he asked. “They dance around it n then kinda answer it, like sorta.”

In another tweet, Big Sean asked why Abraham Lincoln’s name was continuously brought up during the debate. “Did he say Abraham Lincoln?” he said. “What’s going on here?!!”

Lastly, producer Mike Dean opted to use the retweet function to share his thoughts as he reposted a tweet that said, “Spoiler alert: Trump doesn’t want to pay the workers in his hotels and clubs a higher minimum wage.”

You can find some more reactions from the music world below.

Estelle is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.