When I spoke to director Jason Woliner about the making of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Amazon's surprise sequel to the Sacha Baron Cohen prank comedy sensation Borat, he took me on the journey of casting the film's breakout star: Maria Bakalova. Bakalova plays Tutar, Borat's daughter, and she provides a ton of the film's laughs, surprises, and surprising emotional centers. To win the role, Cohen, Woliner, and their crew had Bakalova undergo lots of on-camera screen tests in London. What did these screen tests entail?

I was lucky enough to speak one-on-one with Bakalova over Zoom, and asked her what she did during these screen tests. Bakalova explained three of them; the first two involved her and costar Cohen. But the third one involved her, strangers, and a horrific concoction to make herself smell... horrible:

"We were together for the first test. There was another one where we had to try the most dramatic scene in the movie when it's like the breakup between Tutar and Borat; that was the second one. And I believe that the third one was when I was alone and they wanted to test me, if I'm alone in a room or in a place with some people — that's pre-COVID, when COVID wasn't happening, so that's why I said 'in a room' — if I'm alone, am I gonna handle the scene by myself? Because when Sacha is there, he is gonna save it forever. I remember that some of [the production team] advised me, 'Don't be clean, don't prepare yourself to look pretty or to be glam or something. Try to not take [a] shower.' And I was like, 'Oh, okay, I mean I'm ready for it, but I'm in the middle of another production, so it's gonna be devastating for the rest of the crew in the movie that I was shooting.' So I made something super smelly, stinky with banana peels, old eggs, vinegar, old olive oil, onions. And I mixed it and it was probably the worst smell that you can ever imagine. And I put it all over me, and I started hugging and touching people for [goodbyes], and they were like, 'Okay, this is not an actor, for sure.' So that was probably the last audition that I went [on], and it was maybe two weeks before I came to America and we started shooting this crazy, beautiful roller-coaster."

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