Maria Bakalova, who plays Borat’s daughter in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm and is up for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for the role, is an award-winning 24-year-old Bulgarian whose Instagram account shares everything from photos with her dog to poolside swimsuit pictures to messages of support for Black Lives Matter. “You picked the wrong generation to fuck with,” says one of the images.
The people she encountered making Borat Subsequent Moviefilm might agree.
In the film, Borat’s daughter, Tutar, aka Sandra Jessica Parker, travels from Kazakhstan with Borat to the United States to help him bribe the Trump Administration. Sacha Baron Cohen, returning as Borat, is on familiar ground tricking real Americans who have no idea he is playing a preposterous character. But Bakalova matches him scene-for-scene, and has gained the most attention for two standout Borat Subsequent Moviefilm moments: A prank on a South Carolina anti-abortion clinic, and an awkward hotel rendezvous with Rudy Giuliani.
Though she was little known in the U.S. prior to the film, she grew up knowing she wanted to act.
“I started singing at the age of 5 or 6 and then I started flute lessons. But at some point, I wanted to explore more. I wanted to escape from reality,” she told The New York Times. “Because in acting, you can become anybody. You can do everything. You can live on Mars. I was really obsessed with Scandinavian cinema and the Dogme 95 movement, and inspired by actresses like Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman and Natalie Portman — how strong they can be and the important stories they can tell.”
She was not a prankster, she added: “I was a super-disciplined child. I was reading too many books.”
Bakalova said in a Good Morning America interview that she scored the role of Borat’s daughter after self-taping her first audition, then continuing through further rounds. From the start, she said, Cohen wanted to see how well she could interact with unsuspecting people who thought her and Cohen’s characters were real.
Also Read: See Maria Bakalova in Her Pre-Borat Film Debut, Transgression (Video)
“We started with self-tape. It was an open call. I sent another one and then I went to London, England a few times and we even started with real people in the first audition. It was crazy,” Bakalova said. “The most important part was that people would believe in me — that I’m real.”
Cohen said the Borat team interviewed 600 women from all over the world to fill the role, and that Bakalova had barely left Bulgaria before traveling with him to the United States to interact with unsuspecting Americans.
“She’s hilarious, she’s one of the most courageous actors in history. If she doesn’t get nominated for an Oscar, that’s a travesty,” he told GMA. “And she has the capacity to deliver a scene and make you cry, which is what finally got her the part.”
Cohen has happily shared the spotlight before — he was joined in the first Borat by the naysaying producer Azamat (Ken Davitian, who later became a Los Angeles restaurateur) and in Bruno by his assistant’s assistant, Lutz Schulz (Swedish actor Gustaf Hammarsten).
But neither men drew as much attention as Bakalova. In keeping with Cohen’s modus operandi, she was largely unknown in the United States prior to her work in the Borat sequel. Their comedic objective was to behave so guilelessly that Americans let down their guard enough to reveal their own worst selves. (Though a few people, notably nanny Jeanise Jones, shine.)
Bakalova had a respectable list of acting credits pre-Borat, including filmmaker Val Todorov’s Trangression, in which an 18-year-old is convinced to disclose a wild sexual experience with an older rocker. She won best actress at Toronto’s AltFF Alternative Film Festival for the role.
“Maria Bakalova’s role as Yana in the 2018 Bulgarian film Transgression was memorable to me personally as she brought passion and displayed mastery over a broad range of emotions,” festival director Jenell Diegor, one of the judges, told MovieMaker. “We are very happy that more people will now get a chance to see her perform in the new Borat film!”
Todorov told MovieMaker that he has changed the tagline of Transgression (available here) to note that Bakalova is now starring in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.
“I discovered Maria in 2016 when we auditioned for the lead in the movie,” he said in an email. “From the first moment she struck me as fearless, talented and very versatile. This was her film debut and her only leading role. Like in Borat, we did a mixture of scripted scenes with improvised ones often in an environment with people who didn’t even know we were shooting a movie.”
Sacha Baron Cohen as Borat and Maria Bakalova as Borat’s daughter, Tutar, fleeing the scene of a Borat Subsequent Moviefilm prank. Courtesy of Amazon Studios.
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Stupidest thing I ever saw. She untucks his shirt and he tucks it back in. How is that a scandal?
Deep State knows no SHAME! We are sick of you LOSERS and your phony BLACKMAIL...We the people LOVE Honorable Rudy Guliani! He's GENUINE and he's the PEOPLE'S Mayor.
Think I busted a rib laughing at the baby cupcake/ Christian "women's clinic" scene. "I just try to give daughter pleasure, next thing she has baby inside" The scary bit was his stay with the QAnon dudes. This really is what we're dealing with- Guys with gun collections who truly believe Democrats are torturing kids and drinking their adrenaline-filled blood (which btw, in case you were curious, would scientifically have no effect at all due to the way adrenal glands function & adrenaline crosses the blood-brain barrier, I know this might bum out renowned QAnon scientists????) and also think there's some giant coalition of militant "leftists" who- of course, want to destroy the country. That's literally dumber than the dumbest plot of any horror/ sci-fi story ever conceived. More alarmingly, they had no qualms admitting they "couldn't do what they'd like to do" to liberals because "they have rights" that "should be taken away from them". I mean, it's not news at all that a great deal of republicans think this way, it just underscores the irony that a majority in the party claiming to be patriots, who are supposedly trying to preserve the constitution and the American way of life openly support denying basic constitutional rights & freedom to half of American citizens because of their political differences, and they invent fantasies to justify these extremely un-American agendas based on batshit insane, ridiculous conspiracy theories which the current president *welcomes* as a legitimate platform, along with violent white supremacy. These beliefs put into action would be called a "totalitarian state". Yet somehow the other side is the boogeyman,our jack-booted thugs kicking down doors and seizing... I don't know, beer sipping hats? Back issues of Guns & Ammo?? Be honest- say you rounded up all the so-called liberals and took away our citizenship & rights. What next? Are you gonna check the constitution for the part with the Final Solution? Its a free country so I guess you're free to take away our freedom because you're right, and we're wrong, which the addendum plainly states forfeiture of all human rights. The "Proud" Boys strutting around, beerguts hanging below the shirtline trying to intimidate protestors with slung AR-15's are the modern equivalent to the Schutzstaffel minus the exercise and SS uniforms. This great nation and her European allies' proudest deed was when we fought- united- to crush this sort of nonsense and the threat they posed to the free, civilized world and the true American way of life, to safeguard freedom and peace among ourselves and all those who fought so bravely at our side. For what? To defeat an evil empire of racial hatred and its perverse brand of conservatism which allowed it to grow into a global threat- a twisted brand of toxic conservatism very similar to the one being proliferated by a megalomaniacal leader right now. He has divided us. He continues to lie, sow hatred and foment political violence among us. He is the physical manifestation of lies, ignorance and hatred. In fact everything REAL about the man is all that working-class republicans claim to despise- He was born into wealth, dodged military service when our country was at war, never actually worked for anything, is a member of the wealthy political elite- he was even very good friends with the Clintons, Hollywood & high-ranking democrats, which was in fact his registered party- until it wasn't convenient anymore of course- has values that spit in the face of Christianity, shows contempt for veterans and war heroes, is a proud serial adulterer, has publicly expressed his dislike of blue-collar Americans for decades- again, until it was inconvenient, has liberally abused government power whenever it suited him- let's talk about his frequent abuse of "executive action", and his admin has a higher turnover rate than a spit roast. If the views described above represent your position, or if you fantasize about pumping .223 rounds into unarmed protestors, or casually throw around words like "civil war", come back to the United States of America man... I am one of those people you would probably call a "leftist". Guess what I love this country more than life itself and I put my life on the line for it. I don't hate you. I hate what's happening, but take a good look at it, it's bad for all of us. I would never, ever even consider taking away any of your rights, your ability to prosper or your dignity as a citizen of this great nation, let alone wish violence upon you, over politics or anything. I want to understand, I really do. Please put away the AR-15, and just think about what you stand for. If there's even a distant, momentary sliver of half a doubt then something IS wrong. Because I'm being dead honest when I say I want the best for everyone in this country. Unless they're like, a murderer or a child molester or a Russian spy.