With a nod to Ozempic and his PT, the Borat actor is giving us a masterclass in self-deprecation and candour to accompany his extreme glow-up
I
t is a rite of passage for almost every comic actor working today. You spend years – sometimes even decades – curating a reputation as a happy go lucky, physically anonymous everyman. Then Marvel comes knocking, and you realise that you might have to share a scene with Chris Hemsworth, and next to him you’re going to look like a weedy twig-worm hybrid. The next thing you know, you’re all over the internet, greased up and flexing. Which is a very long way of saying: Borat’s got abs now.
Sacha Baron Cohen is this month’s Men’s Fitness magazine cover model. His pecs are popping. His biceps are bulging. His forearms look like a sack of live snakes. His pants are, conservatively, two and half inches lower than they really should be. His entire torso looks like it’s been rolled around in margarine. He is, to use his own words, “hard launching my mid-life crisis”.
And this is all because of Marvel. Sacha Baron Cohen stars in the Disney+ TV show Ironheart as Mephisto. Which might be news to a lot of you, since Ironheart was released right at the moment that superhero fatigue hit such terminal velocity that president of Marvel Studios Kevin Feige essentially chose to promote the Fantastic Four movie by promising everyone that he wasn’t going to make as many TV shows any more. But, really, that’s beside the point.
