Marvel fans spent years predicting when Mephisto would finally arrive, a guessing game that started with WandaVision and only ended in the last episode of Ironheart, where Sacha Baron Cohen surfaced as the demon. What the actor now describes is the conversation that came before that reveal: a creative team that, before handing a Jewish actor the franchise’s version of the devil, stopped to ask whether the offer itself might wound him.

As Deadline reported, Cohen recalled the meeting during a live taping of the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “It was a wonderful meeting when I was offered it,” he said, describing what he called “an almost entirely Black producing and directing team.” According to Cohen, they told him: “We want to offer you Mephisto, but we are aware of the negative association of Jews historically with the devil, and we want to make sure that you’re not insulted by us offering this.” He called it “such an amazingly considerate, empathetic thing to say,” and his answer was short: “Yeah, I’m good.”

The three-time Oscar nominee then explained why the gesture landed. “I think for the Jews out there, sometimes we don’t feel seen. We don’t feel like people can empathize with us, that we are suffering too,” he said. “And so to have this entirely Black producing and directing team be so empathetic, was a moment of being seen. It was an amazing experience.”

The team he describes is the one behind Riri Williams’ solo series. Ironheart was created by head writer Chinaka Hodge and executive produced by Ryan Coogler and Zinzi Coogler, whose Proximity Media co-produced it, with Sam Bailey and Angela Barnes directing the episodes. Dominique Thorne returned as Riri, the MIT prodigy she first played in Coogler’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

Mephisto’s role was small in screen time and large in consequence. In a finale flashback, the demon offers Parker Robbins, played by Anthony Ramos, his hooded cloak to help him achieve his desires, the bargain that had powered Parker’s turn as The Hood all season. Hodge has said that bringing the character in was not her decision alone, but one the wider Marvel team backed.

For Cohen, whose three Academy Award nominations came for co-writing the two Borat films and for playing Abbie Hoffman in The Trial of the Chicago 7, the role was a single-episode appearance. Ironheart premiered on Disney+ with three episodes on June 24, 2025, and closed its six-episode run on July 1, wrapping Marvel’s Phase Five.

Mephisto’s whole business in Ironheart is the deal: a cloak handed over, with the price left unspoken. Off screen, the deal Cohen was offered came with its hardest question asked out loud first.