Will Sacha Baron Cohen Air His Controversial Sarah Palin Interview?

Esquire writes that we may not see the biggest scene from "Who Is America?"

Sacha Baron Cohen
Sacha Baron Cohen onstage at the Friars Club Honoring Martin Scorsese With the Entertainment Icon Award at Cipriani Wall Street on September 21, 2016 in New York City. (Neilson Barnard/Getty Images)
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There have been some truly stunning moments in Sacha Baron Cohen’s Who Is America? In the first two episodes, Cohen exposed the evil nature of pro-gun advocates and effectively humiliated a racist Republican lawmaker from Georgia into resigning.

But since those episodes, Esquire writes, Cohen has been going for shock value and inappropriate jokes, instead of showing the evil side of immoral men. On top of that, we are still waiting for the controversial episode with Sarah Palin to air.

Palin took to Facebook weeks before the show aired to express outrage over an interview she’d done with Cohen, claiming that he tricked her into the interview by pretending to be a disabled veteran. Her post sparked other prominent Republicans to call for a boycott of Showtime, the network that airs the show. But now, it is uncertain if that episode will ever see the light of time.

This week, Showtime president of programming Gary Levine told reporters at TCA that the Palin interview might not even appear on the show, Esquire reports.

“All I can say about that is that there are several people who have thrown themselves in front of buses that may not be heading their way,” Levine said. He added that the interview might not make the cut because Cohen “is always refining” and has “a very high bar.”

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