After stirring up all sorts of controversy and creating problems for plenty of politicians and pundits, Sacha Baron Cohen‘s comedy documentary series Who Is America? will not be returning for a second season. No, the show hasn’t been canceled, but instead, Cohen simply doesn’t see a way to easily continue the show and deliver the same kind of shock and hilarity.

The Hollywood Reporter recently had an interview with Sacha Baron Cohen on their Awards Chatter podcast, and thankfully, he wasn’t playing any of his characters this time. Unfortunately, he was very firm about the future of Who Is America? when asked if there would be a second season of the series over at Showtime. Cohen flatly said:

“No. I will never be able to get a politician to bare his buttocks while screaming ‘God bless America!’ and screaming the N-word.”

Of course, this is something that Sacha Baron Cohen really did pull off when he posed as an Israeli anti-terrorism expert and was able to get Georgia state representative Jason Spencer to bare his ass and scream the n-word. If you missed that jaw-dropping display of stupidity, here you go:

But in all seriousness, Cohen just isn’t the kind of person to beat something into the ground simply because it’s successful. He explained on the podcast:

“It’s like Da Ali G Show in England — I did one season. And the idea is not to make it a Seinfeld or an SNL.”

Indeed, Da Ali G Show was a big hit across the pond and found strong following in the United States on HBO. But after that, he didn’t try to keep it going with more seasons. Sure, he brought those characters to the big screen in the form of the mockumentary movies Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan and Brüno. But even after everyone couldn’t stop quoting Borat for years, he didn’t go back to the well for a sequel or create a Borat show or anything like that.

Furthermore, there are a couple of logistical problems. First of all, Cohen doesn’t really have any other new characters ready to go in order to dupe a whole new group of politicians and pundits. The characters from the first season won’t work anymore since they’ve been exposed as fake, so he would need a new roster. But beyond that, Cohen says the make-up required for him to not be recognized was a “grueling” process and he’s just simply “too lazy to do this.”

This is probably bad news for Showtime boss David Nevins, who was “dying” to see more of Who Is America?. But when it comes to the comedy of Sacha Baron Cohen, you just have to let him do his own thing. After all, this time he landed a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a TV Musical or Comedy, so who knows what will happen next time he gets an original project together.