Sacha Baron Cohen's prank on Rudy Giuliani backfired this week when the former New York mayor called the police on him.
Giuliani told the New York Post's Page Six that he went to the city's Mark Hotel for what he believed to be a serious interview about the US government's response to COVID-19.
The coronavirus pandemic has killed 135,000 people in the US so far - that's more Americans than were killed in either World War I or the Vietnam War.
Things seemed above board at first for Giuliani with a female interviewer kicking things off with soft questions in a room professionally decked out with lights and cameras, but it went downhill when "this guy comes running in, wearing a crazy, what I would say was a pink transgender outfit".
"It was a pink bikini, with lace, underneath a translucent mesh top, it looked absurd. He had the beard, bare legs, and wasn't what I would call distractingly attractive," Giuliani, 76, said.
Admitting that he didn't immediately realise that the intruder was Cohen, Giuliani added: "This person comes in yelling and screaming, and I thought this must be a scam or a shake-down, so I reported it to the police. He then ran away."
Other sources told the website that Cohen was seen sprinting out of the hotel and down 77th Street in Manhattan wearing just a bathrobe. However, while police did arrive on the scene to investigate, Cohen was not apprehended, and the New York Police Department opted not to comment.
"I only later realised it must have been Sacha Baron Cohen," Giuliani added. "I thought about all the people he previously fooled and I felt good about myself because he didn't get me."
A representative for the Borat star declined to comment.
It's the latest stunt for Cohen, who recently gatecrashed a right-wing event in Washington posing as a racist country singer, encouraging the crowd to sing along to lyrics about liberals being "chopped up" or "injected with the Wuhan flu".
Following the incident, it was reported that it may have been a stunt for Cohen's Showtime comedy Who Is America?, but the US TV network has yet to comment on the speculation.
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