Borat Subsequent Moviefilm briefly trolls Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with a joke about his recent blackface controversy. The moment in question takes place during the opening minutes of the 2020 Borat sequel, and could easily be missed by viewers who don’t understand the correlation between a Barack Obama reference and a man wearing blackface in a photo.
In Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Sacha Baron Cohen once again pranks unsuspecting Americans. This time around he enlists Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova to portray his Melania Trump-loving daughter, Tutar. The film centers on Borat’s attempts to arrange a marriage between Tutar and Vice President Mike Pence, which will at once save Borat’s life while restoring the honor of Kazakhstan after the nation was embarrassed in Larry Charles’ original 2006 mockumentary. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm mostly takes aim at President Donald Trump and his closest allies, but there are also numerous jabs at celebrities, politicians, and people that Cohen wants to manipulate for one reason or another.
The early moments of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm establishes the basic premise. Through voiceover narration, Borat explains that he spent 14 years in a labor camp after the events depicted in Borat, and then learned that the United States had been ruined by an “evil man” named Barack Obama, which led to other “Africans” becoming political leaders. Trudeau is among the examples of African leaders listed, alongside a photo of the current Canadian prime minister wearing an Aladdin costume with blackface.
In September 2019, it was reported that Trudeau wore blackface during a 2001 “Arabian Nights” party. The future politician was then 29 years old, and had been teaching at West Point Grey Academy in Vancouver, British Columbia. As shown in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, the image in question shows Trudeau wearing a turban and brownface while posing with four women. TIME learned about the photo after acquiring a yearbook from one of Trudeau’s former acquaintances, Michael Adamson. In response to the initial report, Trudeau stated that “I shouldn’t have done that. I should have known better and I didn’t. I’m really sorry.” Trudeau said that he didn’t consider the blackface, or brownface, to be racist when the photo was taken.
Trudeau later admitted that he also wore blackface in high school for a performance of “Day-O,” a Jamaican folk song. Reports later surfaced of a third incident from the early ’90s, in which Trudeau appears in a video wearing blackface. In response, he stated that “The fact of the matter is that I’ve always been more enthusiastic about costumes than is sometimes appropriate.” One month after the initial blackface scandal, Trudeau’s Liberal party established a minority government during the 2019 federal election, but lost the popular vote. In Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Cohen trolls Trudeau early on before shifting his attention to U.S. politicians such as Mike Pence and Rudy Giuliani.
