When Sacha Baron Cohen was finalising his £120 million divorce from wife Isla Fisher, he hired expensive and rottweiler-esque PR gurus to ensure that his squeaky-clean reputation remained fully intact.
As rumours swirled that their parting after more than 20 years together was altogether more problematic than they’d originally made out – in a statement accompanied by a jolly photo of them together in tennis gear, talking about downing their racquets – Sacha quickly got a team in place.
Some weeks later, he quietly put the news out that he and his beautiful Australian wife had split amicably despite sources still insisting that this was ‘so not the case’.
Indeed, the reason given for their split was that they had grown apart after 14 years of marriage and three children and he was determined to stick to that story. Any talk of the pair being at war was shot down aggressively.
Those familiar with the split told me at the time, ‘Sacha wanted to control the narrative like he always does’.
Sacha’s representative briefed: ‘It’s all sorted. Now Sacha and Isla both just want to get on with the rest of their lives – and focus on their family’s well-being.’
So just imagine how furious the London-born star is feeling right now after pictures emerged of him having dinner with American model Hannah Palmer, who is 26 years his junior, at the upmarket Steak 48 restaurant in Beverly Hills this week.
Sacha, 53, and social media influencer Hannah, 27, were snapped leaving the venue, a favourite of stars including Ben Affleck and Tom Holland.
Sacha Baron Cohen and Isla Fisher were together for more than 20 years before announcing their split last year
American model Hannah Palmer, 27, was recently spotted having dinner with Sacha in LA
Their two-hour dinner ‘date’ was shrouded in such secrecy, that Sacha and Hannah – dressed in a leopard print minidress and knee-high boots – left by separate exits before getting into the same Cadillac Escalade limo which was waiting outside.
Leaving by different doors is, of course, a well-trodden ploy by stars who are keen to keep their meetings away from the public eye, and with Hannah being the first woman that Sacha has been linked to since his split, it was all rather predictable that he used it.
And it didn’t take long before Sacha’s PR machine came out of the woodwork to play down the meeting.
On Friday afternoon, around 12 hours after pictures of them emerged online, one of Sacha’s friends contacted me to insist that they are just friends and that any suggestion they are dating or in a romantic relationship is untrue.
They said: ‘Someone seems to have been making mischief and trying put two and two together to make five. They have met a couple of times and have mutual friends and got on – and Sacha has given her some advice regarding Hollywood and acting.
‘But this was not a date. They were both going to the same event so they went to dinner beforehand. And once at the event, they went their separate ways. Sacha has been single for almost two years and is feeling in the best physical shape he has in years.
‘He is enjoying meeting and being introduced to new people both professionally and socially but is still taking things slowly because this is a new world for him. This is nothing more than that.’
Indeed, if that is the case, Sacha and Hannah have kept in touch for some weeks after they were seen sitting next to one another at the 50th birthday party of Taika Waititi, film director and husband of Rita Ora, in Ibiza last month.
Sacha and Hannah can be seen sitting together at Taika Waititi’s 50th birthday party in Ibiza last month
Some publications have claimed that is where they met, though others suggest that they were already familiar with each other at the event which was held at a rented villa on the party island.
Photographs emerged today of them sitting alongside each other at the star-studded event where other A-list guests included Kate Moss, Matt Damon and Sebastian Stan.
Those who know Sacha say this is ‘most definitely not’ how he would have wanted his dating life after Isla to have emerged.
‘Sacha likes to be seen as a very sensible and classy man,’ says one source. ‘For something like this to come out would have made him very cross, he would have hated it.
‘It is so telling that he and Hannah left a restaurant separately, that’s what you do if you are trying to keep things a secret.
‘But then why would you do that if you didn’t have anything to hide? It’s all rather bizarre and mystifying.
‘He obviously didn’t expect to be seen, or indeed have his photograph taken.’
Sacha and Isla first met at a party in Sydney in 2001, with Sacha later recounting how he’d fallen for her immediately when he realised how ‘hilarious’ she was.
They had two daughters, now aged 18 and 15, and a son, who is ten. In April last year, however, they stunned fans with an announcement that they were splitting up.
‘After a long tennis match lasting over 20 years, we are putting our racquets down,’ Isla wrote in April last year. ‘In 2023 we jointly filed to end our marriage. We have always prioritized our privacy and have been quietly working through this change.’
It had been an open secret among their friends for more than a year that they were no longer a couple, but during this time their PR machine had shut down numerous journalists from running the story, insisting it was not true.
The announcement that it was true came just days after it emerged that actress Rebel Wilson had accused Sacha of sexually harassing her on the set of their 2016 film, Grimsby – claims he denied, adding that ‘these demonstrably false claims are directly contradicted by extensive detailed evidence’.
Wilson was later forced to redact portions of her memoir in which she accused the Ali G star of impropriety.
The Fisher-Cohen divorce was quietly settled in June – amicably we were told, although claims still vary on that front.
Their marriage had long been the subject of fascination, as they’d always seemed such an odd match.
Isla, now 49, is Scottish by birth, and was raised in Australia. She made her name on the soap opera Home and Away.
Sacha, meanwhile, first rose to fame in the 1990s with his Ali G character, the infamous spoof wannabe gangster who became a comedy star.
He also starred as Borat, a journalist from Kazakhstan, and played the role of flamboyant Austrian fashionista Bruno.
Hannah is an even stranger match. While she is not a Hollywood actress, she isn’t without her own fame. She has a huge following on social media, thanks to her many risqué snaps. She already has 2.2 million followers on Instagram and 575,000 on TikTok.
Her accounts feature endless pictures of her in bikinis while on exotic and lavish holidays to the likes of Hawaii, Mexico and Saint-Tropez, and she is also pals with DJ and model Chantel Jeffries and ex-Towie star Vas J Morgan.
She also had an OnlyFans account which she claimed earned her an eye-watering £4million in her first year on the X-rated site.
Sacha’s enjoyment in hanging out with much younger and very attractive women has prompted those who know him to wonder whether that was what prompted him to undergo a stunning body transformation.
In July, he showed off his new muscly body on the cover of Men’s Fitness UK magazine in preparation for his role as Mephisto, a devil-like figure in the Marvel Universe.
He credited a cocktail of Ozempic, private chefs and personal trainers for his new physique.
And when posting the snaps on his Instagram he joked that it was his ‘mid-life crisis’ that had led him to do it.
Of course, he was just teasing, but it has left some who have been previously been in his and Isla’s circles to wonder whether that is behind his secret rendezvous with a much younger – and very glamorous woman.
‘Hannah is very different to Isla,’ mused one insider. ‘It does make you wonder.’
