Sacha Baron Cohen told Howard Stern on October 19, 2026, that Borat’s suit has never been washed and that he doesn’t shower either. He said keeping the character believable means building “a 360 degree character,” one where “there’s nothing you can ask me that can reveal that I’m fake.”
He described a rule around every shoot. For the 15 minutes before and after he’s in character, he stays locked in, in case someone bumps into him, because everything on his person has to be real.
That extends to the smell. Borat’s suit has never been washed, Cohen said, and he doesn’t shower. On top of that, he sprays himself with “a kind of, you know, disgusting thing” to finish the stench.
It isn’t a new method. Back in 2007 he described never washing the gray suit and skipping deodorant so people would believe Borat came from a country where hygiene wasn’t a necessity. For the 2020 sequel he lived five days as the character.
Cohen was on the show as himself, there to talk about his Ali G film, when he walked Stern through how the Borat stink gets made.
