Sacha Baron Cohen has donated $100,000 to charities in the Oklahoma City area in the name of Jeanise Jones, the unemployed babysitter who was duped by the actor in a sizable cameo in “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.”
Derrick Scobey, the pastor at Jones’ Ebenezer Baptist Church who will distribute the funds at Jones’ request, told People about Baron Cohen’s donation. The money will be used for shelter, food and relief from ice storms and power outages currently facing the city, he said.
A rep for Baron Cohen had no comment.
“I was blown away but not surprised because I was told about what type of heart this man has,” Scobey told People about Baron Cohen’s donation. “Maybe it’s a little risqué, some of the things in the movie, but he has a good heart.”
Baron Cohen’s act of charity came about after Scobey set up a GoFundMe account for Jones after she was paid only $3,600 for appearing in the “Borat” sequel. As TheWrap reported on Wednesday, the fund had raised over $50,000, and since then, it has now surpassed its $100,000 goal to reach $128,000 at time of writing.
Jones appears in two scenes in “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,” in which Borat asks Jones to look after his 15-year-old daughter, Tutar (Maria Bakalova) and brings her into her home wearing a ball and chain. She then learns that Tutar is to be married to an older man — all of which Jones believed to be real and part of a documentary that would only be seen overseas, according to Showbiz911. She later appears in a scene in which Borat comes back to see Jones and asks if she’ll be his “new Black wife.”
Jones flew to Washington state where the “Borat” sequel was filmed and said in a series of interviews that she spent weeks worried about Tutar and whether or not she was intended to be married. As a result, fans who have seen the film have latched onto Jones as a sort of “moral compass” in the film, which Scobey reiterated to People.
“While all these people around the world are loving how she’s the moral compass of the movie, she’s sitting here serving people in the dark and in the cold,” Scobey said. “This is who we are. This is what we do for our community, and we love our community.”
“Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” is available for streaming on Amazon Prime Video now.