Two university students who made a drunken appearance in the hit Borat movie are suing the film studio, claiming they were tricked into appearing in the spoof documentary.
The legal action filed Thursday argues the two unidentified fraternity members at a South Carolina school were plied with alcohol and "engaged in behaviour that they otherwise would not have engaged in."
British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen is courting controversy again after two university students filed a lawsuit claiming producers of his Borat film duped the two into appearing in the hit movie.
(Getty Images)
The two young men appeared drunk and made racist and misogynistic comments in the film, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
The movie, which debuted at No. 1 in North America over the weekend, follows British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen's Kazakh journalist character through a series of comic encounters with a mostly unaware group of Americans.
The lawsuit claims that in October 2005 a production crew took the students to a bar to drink and "loosen up" before participating in a documentary they were told would not appear in the United States.
"They were induced to agree to participate and were told the name of the fraternity and the name of their school wouldn't be used," said the plaintiffs' attorney, Olivier Taillieu. "They were put into an RV and were made to believe they were picking up Borat the hitchhiker."
The two men were then asked to sign a release form, which they were told "had something to do with reliability issues with being in the RV," Taillieu said.
The film "made plaintiffs the object of ridicule, humiliation, mental anguish and emotional and physical distress, loss of reputation, goodwill and standing in the community," the lawsuit said.
Studio 20th Century Fox and three production companies are named in the suit. A studio spokesman said the lawsuit "had no merit."
A third young man claiming to have been present also told ABC News Radio on Thursday he was tricked but that he did not plan to sue.
A number of lawsuits have been filed in the last few years over reality-television stunts. In 2001 Philip Zelnick suffered bruises after being made to go through a fake airport security scanner on the show Candid Camera and successfully sued the producers for $300,000.
Lawsuits have also been filed against several reality shows that involved shocking the unaware, including MTV's Harassment and the Sci-Fi Channel's Scare Tactics, both since cancelled.
The plaintiffs in the Borat case are seeking monetary damages and an injunction to stop the studio from displaying their image and likeness.
With files from the Associated Press
