Sacha Baron Cohen recalls shooting 'nightmare' final scene for new Ali G movie

Sacha Baron Cohen has admitted it was "a nightmare" trying to film "an eight-hour continuous scene" for his new Ali G movie.

In Ali G: Who Iz I?, which he wrote and directed, Baron Cohen reprises his famous sketch character after two decades and also plays liberal professor Dr. Nira Cain-N'Degeocello and Israeli special-ops expert Erran Morad.

Besides Baron Cohen, his co-star Morgana Robinson, and a few celebrity cameos, the rest of the people in the film are real non-actors unwittingly participating in the scenes.

During an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday night, Baron Cohen admitted that filming a continuous action sequence with real people across eight hours was perhaps too ambitious.

"The final scene is an eight-hour continuous scene. It does not stop. I'm wearing a prosthetic head. I'm playing that Israeli character and I switch halfway through into Ali G. We had 200 crew members, it took place over 50 miles, 12 locations, there were explosions along the way, it's involving real people," he shared. "There's 400 beats to it, 400 things that can go wrong. It was kind of incredible."

On their first run of their scene, the Borat star revealed that he sweated so much in his prosthetic head and through his fatsuit that the water "congregrated" around his crotch, making it look like he'd wet himself. On the second go, a fire "broke out".

"The whole thing was a nightmare. I lost millions," he said. "We had to develop, with special effects people, a way for me to urinate with this kind of cup. The whole thing was a disaster."

Baron Cohen has been criticised for bringing back his inappropriate character, whom he described as a "white cultural-appropriating imbecile", with critics insisting Ali G should remain in the 2000s.

In an essay for Time magazine this week, he argued that now was the perfect time to revive the persona.

"The fact that Ali G is outdated and problematic is the very reason I resurrected him," he wrote. "The world he's returned to is, in many ways, worse than the one he left 20 years ago. All the prejudices my characters are designed to expose haven't just lingered - they've metastasised."

Ali G: Who Iz I?, Baron Cohen's feature directorial debut, will be released in cinemas on Friday.