A doctor and Navy Reservist was caught on video making anti-Semitic comments in the movie Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.
The film is the sequel to Borat and features Borat Sagdiyev, a fictional journalist from Kazakhstan. In one scene, Borat takes his teenage daughter, played by 24-year-old Maria Bakalova, to Beauty by Design in Dallas, Texas. The pair meet Dr. Charles Wallace, a plastic surgeon who is also a commander in the Navy Selected Reserves, Task & Purpose reported.
During the scene, Wallace suggested a nose job after Borat told the surgeon that he wanted his daughter to be more attractive to a “top-level guy.” Borat’s daughter immediately asked, “What’s wrong with my nose? Do I look like a Jew?” which was followed by a series of anti-Semitic stereotypes.
“No ma’am, not at all,” Wallace said before gesturing to create an enlarged nose, adding, “Because a Jew would be like this.”
Borat responded by using his hand to demonstrate how much further from the face a “Jew nose” would go. Wallace responded, “It can be that bad, yes.”
At the end of the scene, Wallace recommends breast implants for Borat’s daughter. She asked the doctor if he would want to have sex with her, to which Wallace smiles and said, “If your father was not here.”
Navy Reserve spokesman Commander Ben Tisdale told Task & Purpose that Wallace took part in the mockumentary film in a “civilian capacity.”
“While the United States Navy does not tolerate discrimination of any kind within our ranks for any reason, [Selected Reserve] sailors, in their civilian capacity and not in a paid-status, can participate in media productions such as movies and television without official Navy endorsement, approval, or oversight,” Tisdale said. “To be clear, the Navy Reserve did not endorse Wallace’s participation in the film, nor did we endorse anything he said or did in the film.”
According to Task and Purpose, Wallace’s most recent assignment was to Expeditionary Medical Facility Jacksonville Detachment C, at Fort Worth Texas. Wallace was also profiled in a Department of Defense news story in 2016.
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest project, premiered on October 23 on Amazon Prime. In the film, Borat attempts to find his daughter a husband, first in Vice President Mike Pence and then to Rudy Giuliani.
The Independent reported the film has become the target of a lawsuit, which has since been dismissed by a judge. Holocaust survivor Judith Dim Evans was allegedly interviewed “under false pretenses with the intent of appropriating her likeness.” While Evans passed away earlier this summer, her daughter was reportedly “horrified and upset” by the mockumentary.
The film’s legal defense argued Cohen told Evans what he was really doing in the film, out of respect to her, and that there is footage of Cohen telling her. Fulton County Georgia Judge Kevin Farmer reportedly took the film’s side in the lawsuit and Amazon attorney Russell Smith, told the Independent that, “The lawsuit was dismissed, unconditionally.”
