Sacha Baron Cohen has reportedly been filming a new Ali G movie in secret. Could that explain why this character is suddenly reappearing everywhere, dressed like a pothead and trying to sell bags of weed at Wimbledon? Probably.
Reports surfaced in early July claiming that production has already wrapped on a new, still-untitled Ali G film, shot partly in Oxfordshire and partly in the United States. There is no confirmed title, distributor or release date yet, and Baron Cohen’s representatives have declined to comment. But only days after the news broke, Ali G walked into one of the most closely watched sporting events on Earth wearing a jacket identifying him as Wimbledon’s “official ganja dealer.” The timing hardly feels accidental.
Ali G selling weed at the Wimbledon Men’s final lol pic.twitter.com/07BVClpJ4A
— JD Harmeyer (@jdharm) July 12, 2026
Behind Ali G’s signature glasses, baggy jeans and oversized swagger lies British comedian, producer and screenwriter Sacha Baron Cohen, who has also embodied figures like Borat, Brüno and Admiral General Aladeen.
Ali G first appeared as “the voice of da yoof” on Channel 4’s The 11 O’Clock Show in 1998, before getting Da Ali G Show in the early 2000s and his own feature film, Ali G Indahouse, in 2002. That was the last time we saw him leading a movie, but not the last time we saw the character: Baron Cohen brought him back for the 2012 British Comedy Awards, Ali G: Rezurection in 2014, the 2016 Oscars and, most recently, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in 2024.
From ‘Da Voice of Da Yoof’ To a Big Old Pothead
Created to poke fun at white, suburban chavs wishing they were Black, Baron Cohen took Ali G into some of the spiciest, most bizarre—or probably just senseless—interviews ever conducted with figures like Donald Trump, Noam Chomsky, Newt Gingrich and Buzz Aldrin. The trick was allowing Ali G’s absolute confidence and apparent stupidity to push his interviewees right into Freudian slips.
Of course, the character never existed without criticism. Baron Cohen’s defense has traditionally been that Ali G ridicules privileged white boys imitating Black and Jamaican culture. But critics have long questioned whether audiences are actually laughing at those white boys or directly at the Black community and the stereotypes the character reproduces. That debate began while Ali G was still becoming famous and will almost certainly return with him.
But for now, Ali G seems less interested in revisiting turn-of-the-century debates about race and comedy than in becoming the most conspicuous weed dealer in the history of professional tennis.
You couldn’t have missed him if you were at Sunday’s Wimbledon men’s final. He was wearing his unmistakeable glasses, a skullcap, baggy clothes, thick gold jewelry and a very special white-purple-and-green jacket that read “DA CHAMPIONSHIPZ WIMBLEDON OFFICIAL GANJA DEALER.” Beneath that was an invitation to contact his brand new Instagram account.
In one video, Ali G explained that Wimbledon’s men’s singles was, “despite its name, ain’t a party for gay lords,” but something like the World Cup for tennis—which he described as a “crap version of ping-pong.” “Tennis is better played on grass, which is why I intend to sell as much of it while I is here”, announced the white chav, adding that he planned to sell some “herbal remedies” from his seat.
“So if you want some herbal remedies, me’s got anyting you want, Bob Kush, me got some home grown, as in row HC329. There are any problems here, so it’ll be easy to find me, innit? Respect!”, said the so-called “official Wimbledon dealer.”
From being the “voice of da yoof” in the late ’90s, passing through Da Ali G Show and Ali G Indahouse, Ali G may now be returning as… a full-blown pot dealer?
Ali G Almost Got Arrested… For Real
After announcing that he was back and ready to hook bored people up at the final, Ali G even got into some trouble—real trouble, apparently—with the cops inside the stadium.
Why? Apparently, he had tried to approach Prince William, whom he naturally called “Prince Will.I.Am.”
When confronted, Ali G explained that he only wanted to speak to William because “Prince Harry owes me 1,400 quid because I was his dealer at Eton.” He then asked whether William could kindly tell his brother to “Venmo” the money or pay him in cash. The guts.
These police officers also accused Ali G of turning around and offering inappropriate things to the children seated behind him. He immediately clarified that he was not a “kiddy fiddler” and demanded to know what he had supposedly offered them. “Cigarettes and drugs,” came the answer. “We ain’t got no drugs,” Ali G insisted before instantly pointing at somebody behind him and claiming that they belonged to that person instead.
Whether the entire interaction with the police was genuine, staged for the new movie or fell somewhere in that beautiful Baron Cohen gray area between the two remains unclear. Commenters immediately wondered how the hell the police—or any other authority working inside the stadium—did not recognize one of the most famous comedy characters in British television history.
But that has always been the strange power of Baron Cohen’s work. People may recognize his face, his characters and the possibility that they’re being f***ed with, yet the confusion becomes real anyway.
The new movie may return to the format of Ali G interviewing unsuspecting people rather than functioning as a conventional scripted sequel to Ali G Indahouse. We don’t know. But, if that is true, Wimbledon may have been less of a publicity appearance than a preview: Ali G walking into a tightly controlled institution, acting like an absolute idiot and waiting to see how everyone around him reacts.
Twenty-four years after his first—and only—starring film, Ali G is apparently ready to test whether his particular type of comedy still works—or whether the world has somehow become too bizarre for him to expose.
Either way, Wimbledon seems like the perfect place to start. After all, some do still say tennis is better played on grass.
Cover photo: Raph_PH, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons // User Sj on http://en.wikipedia.org/, and re-cropped by The Anome, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
