The moment occurs at the height of the film’s action, and sees Giuliani in a scene with Maria Bakalova, the actress who plays 15-year-old Tutar Sagdiyev. (In real life, Bakalova is 24 years old, according to IMDb.) Here, Bakalova’s Tutar is masquerading as a journalist who admires Giuliani and who is nervous to be interviewing him.
When the interview, held inside a hotel suite, is over, Giuliani and Bakalova move to another room, and Giuliani sits down on the bed. He then tells her she can give him her email address and phone number, pats her on the lower back, and appears to lean back on the bed and begin adjusting his pants after Bakalova adjusts his shirt. Baron Cohen, in disguise, then bursts into the room, tells Giuliani that the interviewer is 15 years old and also his daughter, and breaks up the encounter.
As with the original Borat movie, much of the sequel is comprised of real-life interactions with people who don’t know that they’re involved in a movie, and that the people they’re talking to are actors playing parts and not legitimate journalists, cameramen, or what have you. Though Giuliani didn’t know the interview was fake in the moment, many have expressed concern and outrage at Giuliani’s interactions with Bakalova regardless, as his behavior could be viewed as inappropriate at best and possible sexual assault at worst.
According to Page Six, Giuliani quickly called New York police after all that went down, realizing he must have been pranked. He told the outlet in July 2020, “This person comes in yelling and screaming, and I thought this must be a scam or a shake-down, so I reported it to the police. He then ran away. I only later realized it must have been Sacha Baron Cohen. I thought about all the people he previously fooled and I felt good about myself because he didn’t get me.”
At the time, Giuliani even said that he is “a fan of some of [Baron Cohen’s] movies, Borat in particular, because [he’s] been to Kazakhstan.”
