Sacha Baron Cohen has donated $100,000 to “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” babysitter Jeanise Jones’ community in Oklahoma. As first reported by People, the money will be distributed by the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Oklahoma City at Jones’ request, to provide shelter and food to community members.
Jones, the 62-year-old favorite in “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,” signed onto the project when the “Borat” team visited her church, looking for a maternal type for a documentary film. For her significant role as Tutar Sagdiyev’s babysitter, Jones shared with Variety that she was paid $3,600 for her performance.
“I can’t say it was fair because they knew it was going to be a movie, and I didn’t,” she said about her pay. “I just thought I was doing a documentary about how we do things in America, but I blame myself for not reading when I signed those papers.”
Earlier this week, Ebenezer’s pastor Derrick Scobey launched a GoFundMe that has raised over $130,000 for Jones, who lost her job earlier this year. “She wasn’t paid much money at all for her role in this movie. … She’s unemployed right now due to Covid. Previously, she worked on a job for 32 years,” he wrote on the fundraising page.
The pastor continued, encouraging fans to express gratitude in a “tangible way”: “Many of you have reached from around the world to say thank you, so I thought it would be great to give people a vehicle to say thank you in a tangible way. Please consider giving a contribution to simply to say thank you to Jeanise for being a moral compass and a light shining in darkness in this movie.”