[Editor's note: The following contains spoilers for Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.]
By now, you've probably heard about Rudy Giuliani's involvement in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, the sequel to 2006's Borat. The continuing adventures of Kazakh journalist Borat Sagdiyev (Sacha Baron Cohen, back in action) see the character return to the United States after almost 15 years away. He's on a mission to restore honor to his home nation of Kazakhstan and is forced to team up with the daughter he barely knows, Tutar (Maria Bakalova), to do it. What's the plan? To make Tutar — who is, in the movie, a 15-year-old (Bakalova is actually in her early 20s) — a suitable bride and gift her to Vice President Mike Pence. So, how does Giuliani figure into all of this?
Breaking Down the Giuliani Sequence
Without ruining the entirety of Borat 2 for you, let's just cut to the nuts and bolts of the third act, which places its focus on Giuliani. Borat and Tutar decide to take a run at gifting her to Giuliani. After researching what kind of women Giuliani is attracted to, Borat attempts to get Tutar up to the aesthetic standards that could lure in President Donald Trump's top advisor. Simultaneously, Tutar goes through an awakening of sorts and realizes that she doesn't have to submit herself to the men around her and doesn't need to change who she is or forgo her dreams in order to be attractive. So, Tutar parts ways with Borat and attempts to kickstart a career as a journalist, something she dearly wants to pursue.
One of her first big interviews is with Giuliani. As the sequence plays out, we see Tutar interviewing Giuliani in a hotel room and it plays out like a standard interview from the lighting to the camera set-up to the way Tutar behaves around Giuliani. It's clear Giuliani believes this is a legitimate interview and is putting his best foot forward. Suddenly, Borat bursts into the room to stop Tutar because he has second thoughts about pushing her toward Giuliani. In keeping with an established bit throughout the movie, Borat appears in disguise, so Giuliani doesn't immediately recognize him. After some back and forth, Borat leaves the room and the interview continues. Tutar eventually leans over and pats Giuliani's leg in a very familiar manner which, in keeping with the plot of the movie, is meant to suggest she is maybe giving a signal to Giuliani.
Tutar eventually leads Giuliani into a bedroom in the suite where she's conducting the interview to help him remove his microphone. What happens next is the reason we're all here: Giuliani seems to get the microphone off him and goes from sitting on the edge of the bed to laying down and puts his hand down his pants for a moment. It's unclear why he would have to lay down on the bed to do whatever he's doing in his pants. Before it goes any further, Borat once again bursts into the room to stop everything. He's now wearing lingerie and shouting that Tutar is 15 and "too old for you" at Giuliani and encouraging Giuliani to have sex with him instead. After some back-and-forth with cops called to the scene, Borat and Tutar run out of the hotel together.
Why the Giuliani Sequence Is So Shocking
To be clear, Giuliani is in the wrong here. Like, completely and without a shadow of a doubt, his behavior in the scene is not okay. As far as Giuliani knew, he was being interviewed by a teenage journalist on camera. Despite he and Bakalova's Tutar going to a bedroom in the back of the suite, Giuliani was still in the power position here. Instead of declining to go into the bedroom and not have a drink with the character of Tutar, (who is, just to repeat, a minor within the confines of the plot) but instead he goes in there. He could maybe have stayed standing to adjust his shirt and jacket after taking off his microphone from the interview. Instead, he made the bizarre and somewhat nauseating choice to lay down on the bed to adjust himself (he maintains he was just tucking in his shirt in a half-baked series of tweets shared Wednesday, October 21) and it sure seems like he's perhaps, getting himself up to the task of whatever he thinks is going to happen next.
And it's not just putting his hand down his pants for a weirdly long period of time; he's seen putting his hand on Bakalova's back, too. I know it's rarely good to make assumptions about someone, but as a person who's been around a man before in an intimate setting, it's pretty fucking clear what Giuliani's body language is expressing. Furthermore, the fact that he's behaving this way believing he's interacting with a teenager then implies this is his baseline of behavior around teenage girls and that should chill you to your core.
The Fallout Out the Giuliani Sequence
Because the Giuliani sequence is arguably the most jaw-dropping moment in the entirety of Borat 2 (and believe me, this is a movie which doesn't skimp on "Holy shit" moments), it made headlines within hours of the review and reaction embargo lifting just two days before its Prime Video launch. Journalists perhaps correctly shunned Amazon's instructions to not reveal any of the biggest moments from the movie in an effort to get the word out about how truly fucked the entire scene is. Nothing in the realm of blame or finger-pointing has been directed at Baron Cohen, Bakalova, or director Jason Woliner, either; this is about showing Giuliani's true face to the world. Granted, it's no secret Giuliani is an extremely problematic individual. But getting this scene out into the open meant skirting any embargos and realizing this is actual news, not solely something related to a movie.
What makes the discussion around the specific details of the Giuliani scene even more incredible is that we knew Giuliani had encountered Baron Cohen in July. At the time, we didn't know Baron Cohen was filming Borat 2 nor did we know the specific context around the actor's path crossing with Giuliani's. As Giuliani portrayed it to Page Six, he believed he was being interviewed and then Baron Cohen busted in wearing "a pink bikini, with lace, underneath a translucent mesh top, it looked absurd. He had the beard, bare legs, and wasn’t what I would call distractingly attractive." No mention of all the extremely important details in between, like being alone in a room with Bakalova while believing her to be a minor. Just interview and then bam, Baron Cohen barrels into the room and the cops are called. Giuliani got a little closer to the truth of what happened when he told WABC Radio that same month he had been caught in a "compromising" situation, but elided sharing details of possible "regretful" behavior by saying, "I don’t think so, I’m trying to remember."
With Borat 2 now available to stream on Prime Video and Giuliani already doing damage control to a rightfully damning situation, it's unclear how this will affect his future. I'm nervous to hope that any kind of swift removal from the public eye for Giuliani will occur because he's a well-connected white man who, thus far, continues to show his face despite aligning himself with the most odious president our nation has ever had. No matter what, we won't forget about this sequence and Giuliani's behavior during it.
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is now available to watch on Amazon Prime Video. For more, read our review of the Borat sequel.
Allie Gemmill is the Weekend Contributing Editor for Collider. You can follow them on Twitter @_matineeidle.