Showtime host Sacha Baron Cohen revealed Wednesday that he stumbled upon what he thought could be a possible pedophile ring while taping his controversial summer series “Who is America?”
During a classic Baron Cohen-style fake interview, the comedian plays a character named Gio who eventually asks a Las Vegas concierge to get him an underaged boy as a “date.” After this concierge offered to put “Gio” in touch with a person who apparently procures such boys, Baron Cohen turned the troubling footage over to the FBI.
“We were shooting some of this at the time of Harvey Weinstein. We wanted to investigate how does someone like Harvey Weinstein gets away with doing what … get away with criminality, essentially. And the network that surrounds him. We decided that Gio would interview a concierge in Las Vegas,” Baron Cohen explained to Deadline.
Baron Cohen then asked the concierge about getting him an underage boy as a “date”:
“And then at the end of the interview I say, listen, I want to go out and celebrate now. Can you get me a date for tonight? He says, ‘what do you mean, a date?’
I go, you know, like a young man. He says, ‘well, what kind of age?’ I say, lower than Bar Mitzvah but older than eight. And he says, ‘yeah, I can put you in touch with somebody who can get you some boys like that.’ – READ MORE