Ed Sheeran reacts to being mocked in new Ali G trailer
Getting singled out by Sacha Baron Cohen’s most infamous character turned out to be good publicity, not an insult, for Ed Sheeran.
Cohen’s upcoming feature film Ali G: Who Iz I? resurrects the fictional interviewer twenty-four years after his last film outing. The character narrates his own return in the trailer, listing everything that went wrong during his two decades away—wars, the pandemic, and Ed Sheeran by name—before pivoting into the film’s premise: a “documentary” built from real interviews and unsuspecting public figures, channeling the spirit of Cohen’s late-’90s television show.
Sheeran, however, took the jab as an honor rather than a slight. He posted that he wanted to tell his younger self that Ali G would put him in his movie, referencing the character’s signature butchering of “respect,” first introduced in 2002’s Ali G Indahouse, with the portmanteau “Restecpa.”
The production of the film kept its details under wraps entirely; Cohen reportedly showed up in character at Wimbledon this year without tipping off the public about its existence. The story itself centers on Ali G discovering that his girlfriend, played by Morgana Robinson, is pregnant after he resurfaces in the public eye.
While Sheeran found the humor in the provocation, not every reaction matched his good humor. The trailer has stirred real objections in the U.K., where critics and a cinema-boycott group have called out the character’s styling—the dreadlocked wig and Rasta-style hat—as a racial caricature that hasn’t aged well since Ali G’s original run.
Sacha Baron Cohen has built Ali G into a defining piece of British comedy before moving on to even more elaborate disguises. His career trajectory includes projects like Borat, Brüno, a cameo in a Madonna video, and eventually straight dramatic work in films such as The Trial of the Chicago 7 and Marvel’s Ironheart.
Buy on Amazon
Credit
