I don’t like Sacha Baron Cohen. If you’ve been reading my work here for a little while, you may have already gotten that impression. I don’t think his schtick is funny–he was the least funny thing in Talladega Nights, for the record–and I find him pretty obnoxious. That said, some people disagree and enough have done so that he’s making a killing.

Yet it seems that regardless of whether I find him funny or not, I owe him an apology.

See, a while back, I called him a liar. He claimed he was chased off stage at a pro-gun rally and people were trying to force the door of his vehicle open to get to him. I called BS on that.

Now, I don’t know how afraid he actually was at that rally, but we do know that at least part of his story is true. It appears that people really did try to open the door of his ride to get to him. That’s based on footage he just released.

This was not the easiest movie to make. #BoratSubsequentMoviefilm pic.twitter.com/oagfJoGjNt

— Sacha Baron Cohen (@SachaBaronCohen) October 27, 2020

Now, sure, it’s possible that he just edited that moment in well after the fact to lend credence to his claims, but I’m going to take him at his word here and admit that I was wrong. At least in part.

Sure, there’s been some indication that Cohen returned in a different disguise later to watch the aftermath which would suggest he wasn’t too terrified, but whatever.

Cohen, however, claims the problem wasn’t gun rights folks, but because Black Lives Matter showed up to counter-protest.

n a new interview with Stephen Colbert, Sacha Baron Cohen stated that the March for Our Rights scene from Borat 2 was pretty hard to pull off. Singing a song about injecting liberals with the “Wuhan Flu” was going over well with his gun-toting audience at first, but things went south when the Black Lives Matter movement showed up to protest the rally. According to Cohen, he was immediately recognized by the newcomers to the rally, which forced him to flee. “The organizers and a lot of people in the crowd got very angry,” Baron Cohen said. “They tried to storm the stage. Luckily for me, I had hired the security. So it took them a while to actually storm the stage.”

Sacha Baron Cohen then shared footage of his escape, and it is intense, to put it lightly. We can see Borat dressed as Country Steve running from the stage when people start to approach the barricade. He is then rushed to a waiting vehicle, though it does not immediately leave. Cohen can be seen staying low, but the rally organizers and attendees know he’s in there. Someone tries to open the van door, which Cohen has to hold shut while yelling, “Drive, go, go, go!”

Honestly, I’m still not sure how much of that crap to believe. Especially since the story keeps seeming to shift from when it first happened.

Regardless, though, I called him a liar when he said that he was chased and people tried to open the vehicle door, and he proved me wrong. I’m man enough to admit I was wrong on that one. I don’t have to like it or him, but I try my damnedest to be a man of principle, so I have to acknowledge that I was wrong.

About that, at least.