what might have been

Sacha Baron Cohen Says, in the End, Sarah Palin’s Who Is America? Interview Just Wasn’t Funny

Sarah Palin. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Despite her outrage about being duped for Sacha Baron Cohen’s Who Is America?, in the end Sarah Palin didn’t even make a cameo in this summer’s Showtime satire. While the former Alaskan governor described Cohen’s humor as “evil, exploitive, sick,” apparently he didn’t think hers measured up to the likes of, say, Roy Moore or Georgia congressman Jason Spencer. In an interview with Deadline on Wednesday, Cohen confirmed that his sit-down with the former vice-presidential candidate was sadly not Who Is America?–worthy.

“The upsetting answer is, I don’t think you missed much,” he explained. “There was a lot of pressure on me from the channel to put out Palin. And obviously, she did the only publicity for the show because I did zero interviews. There was no other publicity at all for the show. Thanks to her, people knew that the show was coming. But ultimately, I looked at the footage and it just wasn’t funny enough.”

As you might recall, Palin was credited as Special Publicity Consultant (Inadvertent) in the show’s season finale, the role every former or current politician prays they’ll land in a SBC project. “For the pieces to be good, there has to be a good comic dynamic,” Cohen continued. “She was just delivering these kind of rote answers, as if she was doing a campaign speech. And even though I sat with her I think for about two-and-a-half hours, there was no comedy gold.”

Sarah Palin Just Wasn’t Funny Enough for Who Is America?