BORAT MADE ME HIP
Rick Fulton, The Daily Record
Published: Mar 17, 2007
ALONG with hundreds of friends and colleagues, Ellen Davitian watched
her excessively fat husband wrestle naked with another man.
But far from burying her head in her hands, Ellen was more worried for
her husband Ken’s new hip.
Armenian/American actor Ken, 53, is the wonderful hang-dog producer in
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation
of Kazakhstan, the hit movie also starring Ali G creator Sacha Baron
Cohen.
Ken plays Borat’s put-upon producer Azamat Bagatov, who travels from
their native Kazakhstan to America on a road trip few in the States
will ever forget.
And the nude wrestling scene, which sees the men burying their
genitals into each other’s faces as they fight in a hotel room, is a
scene that’s hard to forget.
Ken, who has two grown-up sons, Robert and Aaron, with his wife of 30
years Ellen, revealed: "The first time the wife saw it was at the
premiere. She was in a room with 1000 people from Hollywood and every
time something happened her voice got higher, saying’Oh, oh, oh’.
"But fortunately I have a very sympathetic and loving wife so when she
saw me thrown off the stage, her reaction instead of saying’you
humiliated me, you were naked, how could you do this?’ was ‘oh my God,
I’m glad you bounced and didn’t break your hip,’ because I’d just had
my left hip replaced two months before."
His sons also thought his part in the film was fantastic.
It’s certainly made his career. A jobbing actor for more than 15 years
with roles in Boston Legal, ER, Six Feet Under and adverts for
Budweiser, Ken is now in the Hollywood elite and will star in Get
Smart, a new movie with Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Alan Arkin and
Terence Stamp.
And the actor is happy to admit ‘The Genius’ as he calls Sacha, hasn’t
just given his career a shot in the arm – he’s taken him from a nobody
to a Hollywood sensation.
Ken said: "Working with Sacha changed my life. I think when I die
there will be a photo of me smiling and they’ll still show the naked
fight.That’s great. I wish it follows me forever."
However, Ken admits he hopes he doesn’t have to strip again.
He laughed: "My only concern is getting naked again. I don’t think
I’ll do that unless it’s with a very attractive woman.
"I turn the light off during sex. It’s not my wife who does it, it’s
me."
On a whistle-stop trip to the UK, Ken is in a London hotel room
keeping the jet lag at bay by drinking Red Bull. It’s 11am and he’s
already had two.
Of course while there are plenty of other fantastically funny moments
in the film, the one scene everyone wants to talk about is the naked
scene. From the fight in the hotel room to the naked dash down a hotel
corridor, into a lift with shrieking woman and then into a banquet
hall packed with mortgage brokers, Ken and Sacha were butt-naked all
the way.
Ken also reveals they used separate hotels for each part.
"We found we couldn’t walk around naked in a hotel very long," he
says.
Given his size, Ken admits at first he didn’t want to strip for the
cameras.
He said: "When they told me about the nude scene I asked who would
want to see me nude?
"I kept telling them ‘this is aWes Craven movie, this is not going to
be funny. Let me put on a pair of boxers because naked is going to be
more scary’."
While the rehearsals for the nude fight scene were in boxers, Ken and
Sacha stripped for the main event.
And while Sacha has an exaggerated black silhouette hiding his modesty
superimposed on the film, Ken’s rolls of fat meant you couldn’t see
anything.
The actor knows what I’m getting at and laughs:"It was cold. It was
the first thing going on in my mind, but we were committed to doing
it.
"If The Genius is going to get naked, I’m going to get naked."
After the naked wrestle, the chasing scenes from the corridor to lift
to convention could only be done once.
While they escaped into a waiting car after scaring an elevator full
of hotel guests, Ken and Sacha weren’t so lucky after gate-crashing
the banquet hall.
Ken said: "After we were fighting on the stage, we were both taken
away by security.
"Sacha was taken by the town’s police who knew it was a film.
"But I was detained by hotel security and it was worrying but they
handed me over to the police who threw me into a van naked.
"It was another 30 minutes before someone brought me some clothes."
Ken admits everywhere they went in America they caused chaos and had
some narrow escapes.
During filming they were detained by Dallas police, the United States
Secret Service, had Homeland Security come to their hotel and were
even stopped by a Louisiana State Troopers’ roadblock. And while
they’ve been through a lot, it’s back to the naked scene which Ken
reckons has made him and Sacha life-long friends.
He said: "When you see someone naked there’s a definitely feeling
about seeing them the next time.
"You don’t have to say ‘hello, how are you?’ it’s like you’ve seen
them only yesterday. It’s a comfortable feeling.
"Sacha thinks of me as a big brother and I think of him as a little
brother."
He may not want to strip again but if Sacha starts…
"I always take my lead from Sacha," laughed Ken, "If he starts
disrobing, I’ll start disrobing."
Ken wanted to act from when he was five or six years old after seeing
his grandmother perform in an Armenian acting troupe.
He was a theatre arts major in college Los Angeles and did hundreds of
plays.
He said:"I just thought that acting was cool. I liked it and for me it
was easy." But his family were in waste removal and despite an early
role as Fat Bartender in 1977 movie American Raspberry after college,
he got married and settled into business.
He said: "My family’s waste removal business was very lucrative. We
picked up trash at different commercial locations like apartments and
markets.
"Then I stared up a sandwich making business.
"I was always dabbling in food and if you’ve seen my body you know I
like food."
Since 2003 he has co-owned an LA-based French sandwich chain called
The Dip, but in the early Nineties he dipped his toe back into acting
in the flick Bikini Summer and by 1995 he decided to give acting
another go full-time.
He’s appeared in American television shows like ER, Becker, The Shield
and even S Club 7’s L.A. 7.
When he heard about auditions for Sacha Baron Cohen’s project he was
desperate to move from cameo or one episode actor to something bigger.
Ken knew the part called for a foreigner, so he arrived at the
audition in character, speaking only broken English in a thick
Armenian accent.
He said: "I knew there were about a dozen people Sacha and the
producers wanted to see for a third time so I had only one chance.
"I wore the same suit that’s in the movie and the same accent. One
time they asked if I could ad lib so I said: ‘What do you mean adding
one, two, three?’
"Then an executive producer said ‘no can you do improvisation?’ And I
said’oh I take it in classes.’
"I fooled them. I was doing improv with Sacha and he actually started
to laugh and walked off camera.
"I broke character at the end and said ‘thanks gentlemen, give me a
call if you liked it.’
"That’s when everyone stood up and said wait a minute."
After a recall to make sure Ken was an actor and not a"crazy old man"
he was given the job with Sacha, admitting that if they’d known he was
an actor from the start, they wouldn’t have liked the audition.
Then the movie fun began, which culminates with Pamela Anderson
running away shrieking from a book signing after Borat tries to kidnap
the ex-Baywatch star in a large bag.
Many have felt that the blonde beauty must have known what was going
on but Ken dismisses this.
He said: "I’m sure she knew something was going to happen but she knew
nothing about the bag.
"I know she didn’t think she was going to be chased outside, but she
knew something was going to happen.
"All you have to do is look at her face. Look at the terror."
With the part of an evil assistant in Get Smart, a Hollywood remake of
the American television secret agent comedy series, Ken is also going
back to ER with a part specifically written for him. He said: "I
couldn’t be happier."
And his wife? "She is too and she hasn’t asked me to do any more naked
wrestling."
Borat is out now on DVD.