‘He’s not going to punk me. I’ll trick him’: Ali G: Who Iz I? stooge says he was in on joke but didn’t tell Sacha Baron Cohen

Exclusive: Joshua Loudermilk says suspicions first raised during filming by gun shaped like wearable plastic bottom: ‘You’re gonna put a butt on top of a butt? You can’t run in that’

• This article contains spoilers for Ali G: Who Iz I?

Joshua Loudermilk, one of two men apparently discredited by the new Ali G movie Ali G: Who Iz I?, has said that he was in on the joke, but that the film-makers didn’t realise this.

Loudermilk, a 54-year-old aspiring actor from North Carolina, has told the Guardian he recognised star Sacha Baron Cohen early in the shoot but continued pretending to be a hard-right Maga sympathiser prepared to defend the US border at all costs.