Scotsman, UK
March 10 2007
Naked ambition
by ROBIN ABCARIAN
WHEN YOU THINK OF KEN Davitian, you probably think of him naked,
obese and pendulous, nearly suffocating Sacha Baron Cohen in their
famous naked hotel room fight in Borat. The 53-year-old actor so
completely inhabited the part of Borat’s humourless Kazakh producer
Azamat Bagatov that many people in the film industry still don’t
realise he is in fact an American actor.
"Last week, I met with executives at Disney," says Davitian. "They
said, ‘We wanted to call you in because we thought you’d already gone
back to some foreign land.’ And I said, "But I was in Holes – one of
your movies!" As it happens, Davitian, who always yearned for the
life of a Hollywood actor, grew up in Los Angeles and now owns the
Dip, a sandwich bar in the San Fernando Valley, where he lives with
his family.
It was his son, Robert, who insisted he read for the part of the
"frumpy Eastern European" at the Borat audition. "My perfect
character!" says Davitian. "All my relatives are frumpy Eastern
Europeans, Armenians with accents," he says. "This is the character I
have been doing since I was a child."
Davitian has been riding high since Borat but arrived through a
rather circuitous route. Although he studied theatre arts at college
and later had a small role in an Albert Brooks movie (he ended up on
the cutting-room floor), he went into his family’s waste-management
business. "With the rubbish money that was coming in," he says, "we
were doing very well."
And then he made a disastrous business foray into Mexico. The fiasco
ended in multinational litigation, trade arbitration and bankruptcy.
"It was the worst experience of my life," he says. "I neglected my
family, I neglected my rubbish business here. I lost everything. I
came home broke, broke, broke. My family was mad. I worked as a car
salesman, a telemarketer, a salesman for another rubbish company. It
was horrible."
With help from his father-in-law, he and his family opened a café in
Burbank called Gotham Grounds and later the Dip. His two sons and
wife went to work, while he tried to get his acting career off the
ground. About seven years ago he began to be cast more often, mostly
doing guest spots on TV shows."
At the Borat audition in front of Baron Cohen, director Larry Charles
and writer Dan Mazer, Davitian showed up in character, wearing the
ill-fitting beige suit he later wore in most of the movie, his
eight-by-ten headshot folded to fit in his pocket. "I did the
audition in character without giving them a resume or telling them I
am an American actor," Davitian says. When it was over, in perfectly
enunciated English, Davitian announced: "’Thank you very much,
gentlemen. If you liked the audition, please call me, I had a great
time.’ They stopped me, and said, ‘Wait a minute … ‘"
After winning the role (for which there was no script but a detailed
outline), he was told not to expect much screen time. However, about
three weeks into the four-month shoot, a cross-country romp in search
of Borat’s love object, Pamela Anderson – during which the faux-naif
Borat elicits racist, sexist and anti-Semitic views from unsuspecting
Americans – Davitian was pretty sure of a couple of things: he was in
a good movie, and he’d be getting plenty of screen time. "I don’t
want to sound immodest, but I thought, ‘This is edgy, this is
different, this is new. And there is a chemistry between this tall,
skinny Cambridge-educated genius and the short, fat guy. It works!’"
On screen, when they were supposed to be speaking Kazakh, Davitian
spoke Armenian; Baron Cohen spoke Hebrew. Davitian usually had no
idea what Baron Cohen was saying. As Borat’s grim-faced straight man,
he blow dries Borat’s hair and other body parts, chastises Borat for
running late and is licked in the ear by a bear.
But the scene that will confer cinematic immortality is the
horrifying naked fight, which begins in a hotel room, spills into a
hotel elevator and ends in a hotel ballroom during a banquet for
mortgage brokers. At 5ft 5in and weighing over 300 pounds (and having
just undergone a hip replacement), Davitian was reticent about taking
his clothes off. "I kept saying, ‘Fat, naked guy: not funny. Fat guy
in boxers: hilarious.’" And yet, when it came time to film the fight,
he didn’t hesitate. "You are in a room with what you consider
geniuses, and if the genius is gonna get naked, I am following the
genius."
He worked for close to the standard rate on Borat, which cost an
estimated $18 million (£9.5m) and has grossed $247 million (£128m),
but he has no regrets. "I am doing ER next week. Special guest. First
time for me – no audition, no nothing, they called and said, ‘We want
you.’ " He also has another movie lined up, Get Smart, with Steve
Carell and Anne Hathaway. "People are calling. This has the potential
to change my life."