Ali G's 'stooge' says he was in on joke, outplayed Sacha Baron Cohen

Joshua Loudermilk, a 54-year-old aspiring actor from North Carolina, says he saw through Sacha Baron Cohen's disguise almost immediately and decided to fight fire with fire. Rather than walk off set or expose the prank, Loudermilk tells the Guardian he kept playing the hard-right MAGA border fanatic the film-makers wanted, never letting on that he recognized the star. “He's not going to punk me. I'll trick him,” he recalled. The result is a twist that undercuts the premise of the new Ali G movie, Ali G: Who Iz I?, which appears to show two ordinary men making extreme statements. Loudermilk is one of them, and he says the joke was on the joke.

The film-makers didn't realize he was in on it, according to Loudermilk. He says his first suspicion came during filming when the crew gave him a gun shaped like a wearable plastic bottom. His immediate thought, he told the Guardian, was: “You're gonna put a butt on top of a butt? You can't run in that.” That absurd prop was the tell that the setup was not a serious military-adjacent production but a Baron Cohen bit. Still, he stayed in character, giving the production exactly what it wanted while privately knowing the entire exchange was staged.

Baron Cohen has built a career on hidden-camera confrontation. From Ali G to Borat to Who Is America?, his characters lure real people into saying or doing things they might later regret. The new film, Ali G: Who Iz I?, brings back the character, and its marketing clearly trades on the idea that the people on screen are genuine marks. That premise is what makes the comedy work, and it is what Loudermilk's claim threatens.

Loudermilk's story is not just a behind-the-scenes anecdote. It raises a practical question for anyone producing or distributing unscripted content: how do you prove authenticity? If a subject can secretly be in on the bit, then every “real person” in a prank documentary becomes a potential actor. That uncertainty is a liability for a genre whose entire value comes from the audience believing the reactions are spontaneous.

For the record, the Guardian reports that this article contains spoilers for Ali G: Who Iz I?, and Loudermilk is one of two men apparently discredited by the film. The other man's experience is not covered in this account, so it is possible that the second subject was genuinely caught off guard. But even one compromised subject is enough to put a question mark over the film's authenticity claims.

The strategic lesson extends beyond comedy. Any leader who relies on candid conversations, whether in negotiations, market research, or customer interviews, faces the same risk: the other side may be performing. Loudermilk's approach, staying in character while secretly knowing the game, is the same dynamic that plays out in deal rooms and boardrooms when a counterpart pretends to be something they are not.

For media executives, the takeaway is to verify the awareness of every on-camera subject before you build a marketing campaign around their reactions. For anyone in a negotiation, Loudermilk's “I'll trick him” is a reminder that the person across the table might be reading you as clearly as you are reading them. The joke, in this case, is on the production, and it is a useful cautionary tale.