Sacha Baron Cohen, Rebel Wilson and the grim truth about his tasteless comedy Grimsby

In show business, there’s an old saying “Never work with children or animals”. In the case of the actress Rebel Wilson, there might be a third category: “Never work with Sacha Baron Cohen.” Wilson, who co-starred with Baron Cohen in the 2016 action-comedy Grimsby (retitled The Brothers Grimsby in the US), has devoted a section – chapter 23, to be precise – of her forthcoming memoir Rebel Rising to detailing the difficulties that she claims she faced working with the actor and comedian, who she describes in the book as a “massive a__hole”. 

Wilson recently said on Instagram that “Do you wanna know why I have a ‘no a__holes’ policy now with people I work with? Well it’s all in the book… Because I worked with a massive a__hole.” Initially, she kept the identity of the aforementioned a__hole anonymous, saying only that “said a__hole is trying to threaten me… he is trying to stop press coming out about my book”. But in a recent Instagram story, she announced: “I will not be bullied or silenced by high-priced lawyers or PR crisis managers…the “a__hole” that I am talking about in ONE CHAPTER of my book is: Sacha Baron Cohen.” 

A spokesperson for Baron Cohen has denied Wilson’s allegations, telling the Hollywood Reporter: “While we appreciate the importance of speaking out, these demonstrably false claims are directly contradicted by extensive detailed evidence, including contemporaneous documents, film footage, and eyewitness accounts from those present before, during and after the production of The Brothers Grimsby.”

But there is already form between the two of them. Wilson took on the supporting part of Baron Cohen’s character’s girlfriend Dawn in the film; it was not a demanding role, but according to an interview that she gave to a radio show in 2014, the circumstances of filming it undoubtedly proved to be challenging. 

Describing Baron Cohen as “so outrageous”, she revealed that he unsuccessfully pressured her to be naked on screen, likening her appearance to his notorious nude scene in Borat, and then, in their final scene together, asking her to perform an outrageous act, or, as she described it: “He’s like, ‘Look, I’ll just pull down my pants, you just stick your finger up my butt, it’ll be a really funny bit.’” Wilson refused, and the scene on screen had the tamer – and more palatable – alternative of her merely spanking her co-star. 

If this creative tension had occurred in the service of a worthwhile film, then it might have been artistically, if not personally, justifiable. Yet Grimsby is one of the most perplexing artistic and commercial failures of the past decade, a big-budget action-comedy that sought to meld the envelope-pushing humour that had launched Baron Cohen to fame with impressively mounted set-pieces, courtesy of future Fast X director Louis Leterrier. 

Had it worked, it could have been a corrective to received wisdom that action-comedies often stutter at the box office, but the sheer vileness of much of the comedy within it meant that it was greeted with both audiences and critics with a mixture of confusion and dismay. 

The idea behind the film was not, itself, a bad one. The script, as co-written by Baron Cohen, his regular collaborator Peter Baynham and Wreck-it Ralph creator Phil Johnson, focused on the relationship between Sebastian Graves, a Bond-esque MI6 agent, and his imbecilic football hooligan brother Nobby Butcher. After a series of bizarre events (one of which involves infecting Daniel Radcliffe with Aids-infested blood), the two brothers are forced to go on the run together and uncover a convoluted conspiracy which involves Penélope Cruz slumming it for all she is worth as an actress-turned-megalomanic who wishes to poison the world with a deadly virus. 

There is also, amidst much other unpleasantness, a scene in which the two brothers take refuge inside an elephant’s vagina, only to be soaked in semen as other animals repeatedly have sex with her. Had this taken place in an obscure European art film, might now be regarded as some postmodern wonder of cinema, but was instead seen by the few who paid to watch Grimsby as a moment of towering bewilderment. 

This, however, was not the reaction that the film’s co-producers, Sony Pictures and Britain’s Working Title Films, had envisaged with the picture. Baron Cohen had had enormous success with his Borat and Bruno films, and a similarly near-the-knuckle black comic satire, 2012’s The Dictator, had managed to gross $180 million worldwide, helping establish the performer as a versatile comic who could be ranked alongside his idol Peter Sellers as someone who was both commercially popular and fearlessly innovative. 

When Sony was offered the project, it was greeted with enormous enthusiasm by the international branches of the studio; a typical comment was that it was “a far raunchier, grittier, grubbier and funnier take on the spy spoof” than usual, and one executive enthused of the script: “I haven’t laughed out loud reading in years until I read this.” A substantial budget of $65 million was initially envisaged: a similar sum to The Dictator. 

Yet even in the early stages, doubts were being raised. Thanks to the leaked Sony emails, it is possible to follow the production’s journey from enthusiasm to caution and then to eventual grave disappointment. Eric Fellner, the co-chair of Working Title, wrote to Sony’s Amy Pascal in February 2014 to say “despite me adoring SBC, he’s tough to control both creatively and financially”. It was made clear by Baron Cohen that he, as writer-star, would have final cut on the picture, rather than the director or producers, and that he would exercise “the right to designate co-stars”. 

For the part of Sebastian, whose suavity is undercut by a mixture of humiliating and degrading situations that he is involved in – including, at one point, Nobby having to suck poison from one of his testicles – Baron Cohen produced an A and B list of actors he considered acceptable to star opposite him. On the A list were the established and starry likes of Tom Hardy, Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman, none of whom saw playing second fiddle opposite the comedian as a particularly enticing opportunity and so turned the picture down. 

After actors like Eddie Redmayne and Jon Hamm also passed, Baron Cohen narrowed the choice down to Clive Owen, Colin Farrell and Guy Pearce. But Owen was rejected by Pascal, in part for being “too smarmy”, and Farrell, who had recently gained weight to appear in Yorgos Lanthimos’s absurdist comedy The Lobster, was not looking the model of a suave secret agent. Pearce – Pascal’s preferred choice – was about to be cast when, out of nowhere, Mark Strong, a respected character actor who was probably best known for his villainous roles in Kick-Ass and Sherlock Holmes, impressed Baron Cohen and the studio alike. Fellner raved that “the two things SBC likes are most important…he feels he can play well off him to get the best of the humour….and that at any moment you think he may kill someone!” 

Strong was (and is) undeniably a hugely talented actor, but he is neither an A-list star nor a natural comedian, which presumably suited Baron Cohen, on the grounds that he was in no danger of being upstaged. After the budget was quietly reduced to around $35 million, the rest of the cast was put together, with Cruz cast in a role that, at one point, Julia Roberts was unsuccessfully courted for, and filming took place in mid-2014 in Essex (standing in for Grimsby) and South Africa. 

It was suggested that the picture’s negative portrayal of the Lincolnshire town as a crime-infested hell-hole went down particularly badly with its residents, one of whom informed The Grimsby Telegraph that “The problem I have with this man, is that he was welcomed into this town and treated kind and well, he then goes away and then s____ on the town.” There were dark rumours that, had Baron Cohen – who was spotted attending a football match in October 2013 in the town, chatting to locals and visiting pubs  - decided to film in Grimsby itself, he and the cast and crew would not have been safe. 

In any case, the picture was shot without major incident, although Strong had the strange experience of alternating broad comedy by day with taking on the challenging role of Eddie Carbone in Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge by night, and was intended for a high-profile July 2015 release. It was then screened to test audiences, and their baffled, even horrified, responses demonstrated to Sony that they did not have the summer blockbuster that they had believed they did. Its premiere was therefore delayed until February 2016, suggesting to industry insiders that the film was a bomb in waiting. 

Baron Cohen, however, was something of a master when it came to whipping up publicity for his pictures – who can forget the (staged) moment at the 2009 MTV Movie Awards when, in character as his fashionista parody Bruno, he landed on Eminem’s face? – and the picture’s delay initially appeared to play into his hands, as he organised high-profile private screenings for the likes of Kim Kardashian. 

There is a gruesome running joke in Grimsby about various luminaries being infected with Aids through contact with Radcliffe’s tainted blood, including Elizabeth II, and the film ends with then-presidential candidate Donald Trump suffering the same fate. Baron Cohen turned up at the Detroit premiere of the picture in character as Nobby, wearing a Trump-esque red hat saying “Make America Great Again”. 

He also jokingly declared his support for Trump. “It was Donald’s rallies that won me over,” he said. “It’s like football matches in England: shouting, violence, abuse. The only difference is that we don’t throw the black people out. In fact, Donald is – and it’s the best thing about him – the ultimate soccer hooligan. He’ll listen thoughtfully to the other side’s argument … and then he’ll kick their f______ heads in.” 

If Sony were alarmed by their star’s behaviour, they showed no sign of it, even as Baron Cohen shouted “People of America, please vote Donald Julio Trump, and let’s turn the White House into the Orange House!” Nonetheless, the film had to include a disclaimer that Trump had not participated in its production and – in a typically Baron Cohen-esque touch – was not HIV positive in real life. 

Still, this was the time that the comedian’s previously sure grasp had evaded him. The film flopped badly on release in the United States, grossing a mere $3 million on its opening weekend, which analysts put down to a mixture of audience unfamiliarity with small provincial British towns and general weariness with the spoof genre. As one studio executive put it: “The conceit of the movie looks funny, but on a mass consumption basis, there’s a been-there-done-that to the elements.” 

The marketeers shrugged: “We think we have a really funny movie but for whatever reason, it didn’t convert”, and its failure was blamed on a general lack of awareness or interest in British football, a crucial plot point. As one commentator noted: “Rule No. 1 – never, ever make a movie with soccer as part of the plot. It’s like trying to sell MLS tickets to Premier League fans.” 

Yet Grimsby was barely more successful in Britain, where it was generally critically ridiculed; Gaby Hinsliff, writing in the Guardian, said that she was “mildly bored, occasionally repulsed and ultimately chastened.” Even John Prescott attacked it, calling Baron Cohen a “spoilt public schoolboy from the south kicking the north” and, perhaps most damningly, comparing him to George Osborne. They were both, he said, “A couple of posh southerners patronising the north to further their careers.”

One of its few defenders was the Telegraph’s Robbie Collin, who called it “a vital, lavish, venomously profane two fingers up at Benefits Street pity porn and the social division it fosters” and declared “I laughed, winced, gagged, then laughed even more.” Yet even this was not enough to save the picture, which died an ignominious death at the UK box office. 

Most of its cast and crew escaped unscathed; Strong has continued to be a highly respected stage and screen actor, Leterrier’s hiring for the Fast and Furious franchise demonstrates no hard feelings from Hollywood and the starring supporting cast – including Wilson – have all gone from strength to strength. And even Baron Cohen, perhaps chastened by the reception, has turned to increasingly demanding non-comic roles, such as his appearance in Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 and Alfonso Cuarón’s forthcoming Apple TV thriller Disclaimer, although he did reprise his Borat character for a Trump-baiting sequel in 2020, which met with similar acclaim to the original. 

Nonetheless, Grimsby squats over Baron Cohen’s filmography with suitably elephantine clumsiness. Wilson’s recent comments about her experiences working alongside him may, or may not, chime with others’ opinions of their own time with Baron Cohen on the project. But there can be no doubt that this tasteless, unique and profoundly patronising film will never endear itself to many, massive a__holes or otherwise.