March 4, 2010 | 5:38 pm

Sascha Baron Cohen scrapped from Oscars

Posted by Danielle Berrin

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Sascha Baron Cohen likes to play naughty.

Remember his little butt-in-your-face trick with Eminem at the MTV Awards last year? It caused a sensation when the disgruntled “8 Mile” star stormed out of the ceremony. But in the end, it turned out to be a big ploy. A little jab at homophobia all in good fun.

Of course the Oscars are too stiff for Baron Cohen’s unbridled insolence.

According to reports, Baron Cohen was scheduled to present an award during the upcoming ceremony but his plans to play a small practical joke on James Cameron, who apparently, has no sense of humor, got him barred from the telecast. (Anyone who read the New Yorker profile of Cameron last Fall learned that his ego is every bit as big as his box office, so no wonder). 

The producers of movie’s biggest night ended up cutting the “Borat” and “Bruno” star from the presenters list because they know they can’t control him. So out of boring old fashioned deference to the self-declared “king of the world”—or at least of Hollywood—(at least, right now) the producers scrapped Cohen from the presenter list in order to prevent him from offending the “Avatar” director.

Read more from the Daily Mail:

Sacha Baron Cohen has been dropped as a presenter at the Oscars, allegedly over fears he may drive Avatar director James Cameron to storm out of the ceremony.

The Borat star, who had been invited to introduce one of the awards, planned to poke fun at the film by dressing up as one of its characters -  a blue-skinned, female Na’vi -  and revealing to the audience that ‘she’ was pregnant with Cameron’s love child.

But sources say that fears over Cameron’s reaction led show producer Bill Mechanic to axe the sketch and order Baron Cohen, 38, to be dumped from his first ever Oscars appearance.

‘Let’s just say that Cameron isn’t known to be, shall we say, “self-deprecating”,’ said a show insider.

As an Oscar nominee, Cameron, 55, will be sitting in the front row of Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre during the show this weekend.

Baron Cohen’s spokesman Matt Labov confirmed that the Ali G actor was no longer part of the Oscars.

‘I hate to use the term, because it’s so ubiquitous, but there were “creative differences”,’ he said.

‘Nothing acrimonious, but both sides felt that since they couldn’t agree, [Cohen] might as well remain in London.’