What Happens to This Wheelchair-Bound Actress Onstage at Awards Show Is Simply Unbelievable

If you know anything about comedic actor Sacha Baron Cohen, you know he's all about getting under the skin of his audience and making them squirm...and hopefully laugh.

(Image source: IMDB)

As you may recall Cohen pressed a bevy of controversial buttons with his trickery-filled bizzaro documentary, "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" back in 2006.

Since then he's made "Bruno" and most recently, "The Dictator," an offshoot of sorts from Charlie Chaplin's movie of the same title from 1940.

So when Cohen received the Charlie Chaplin Britannia Award for Excellence in Comedy at the BAFTA LA Britannia Awards Saturday night, it was extra special when an 87-year-old actress in a wheelchair — introduced as the oldest living thespian to have worked with Chaplin — gave Cohen what she said was a cane belonging to the legendary screen icon.

"This is Charlie's actual cane from 'City Lights.,'" she told Cohen. "This is for you."

Quite naturally, a grateful Cohen began a little Chaplinesque dance, tapping his cane on the stage, to the delight of the audience.

But the feel-good moment didn't last for long...

(Image source: BBC via YouTube)

Interested in knowing what happened next? Check out the clip:

After the gasps, what the video doesn't tell you is that it took the crowd at the Beverly Hilton a brief interval to realize that it was another one of Cohen's carefully planned ruses. And the elderly woman whom he fell upon and knocked off the stage — and who was "pronounced dead" and carried out of the ballroom — was part of Cohen's subversion.

The show airs Sunday night on BBC America at 9 p.m. ET.

(H/T: The Wrap)

--

[related]