Initially, the wings were served on a round tray, complete with celery sticks and ranch dressing. But its early days are different from the fiery behemoth it would ultimately become.
Still, the impetus behind a pivot to video - producing short clips to grab the attention of scrollers on Facebook - can be seen in Hot Ones’ first episode, which is just over five minutes long. The powers that be at Complex largely stayed out of their way, according to Evans, or at least responded positively to pushback from Evans and Schonberger. How do we not make them not boring?’ Here’s a disruptive element.” “We were like, ‘Celebrity interviews are boring. But “the main thing was the hook,” says Schonberger. They weren’t trying to impress their guests, and they weren’t afraid to ask questions that might rattle them. The two were fans of interviewers who maintained a bit of aloofness during their interviews - Evans of Howard Stern and David Letterman, and Schonberger of British presenters Alexa Chung and Simon Amstell. More than his willingness to punish himself physically, Evans shared with Schonberger a curiosity about the celebrity-interview format.
Schonberger says the last line in his pitch email about Hot Ones was “I could do the interview, or Sean Evans.”) (Though it almost didn’t end up that way.
Speaking to Eater, Schonberger describes Evans as having a Midwestern sensibility that makes him “extremely relatable, but also had this undercurrent of sense of humor… he was very good at creating space for humor.” He also was doing a lot of stunt journalism at the time - trying the Rock’s diet, playing sports against professionals, and often putting his body on the line. The two didn’t know each other that well, but Schonberger says he had a sense Evans was the man for his weird idea. “Goosed largely by Facebook’s exaggerated video metrics, news publishers had begun to change their editorial strategies to boost their user engagement, which they could then use to sell advertisers on higher ad rates.” Digital publishers were throwing every idea into video and seeing what would stick.Īt the time, Schonberger was trying to build up the First We Feast brand, and Evans was working as an anchor at Complex News. Sean Evans has told the show’s origin story multiple times: One day in 2015, First We Feast general manager Chris Schonberger asked him, “What do you think of a show where we interview celebrities while making them eat violently hot chicken wings?” The phrase “violently hot chicken wings” is what sold Evans, but this was at a time when much of digital media was beginning a “pivot to video,” as the Verge wrote in 2019. So why did he - or any of the A-list, Oscar-nominated, or generally thriving celebrities with their pick of media opportunities - feel the need to subject himself to a YouTube show that, three episodes later, caused comedian Bobby Lee to shit his pants on camera? Already on the A-list, Hart could have gone on any traditional talk show or spoken directly to his fans through social media to promote his projects. In the previous year and a half, he’d starred in Get Hard with Will Ferrell and Central Intelligence with Dwayne Johnson, whom he teamed up with again for 2017’s remake of Jumanji, which was probably filming around the same time that he made his Hot Ones appearance. The result, typically, is celebrities losing their minds, sweating, crying, coughing, chugging milk, cursing out their agents, and barely able to hear the last few questions Evans asks.Īt the time of his appearance on Hot Ones in October 2016, Hart was promoting the standup tour What Now?, which went on to gross $100 million worldwide. All celebrities have to do is eat 10 hot wings, each doused in a progressively hotter sauce, while Evans eats along with them and asks them questions. If you’ve never seen the hit YouTube show, now in its 17th season, the premise is deceptively simple. This is exactly how Hot Ones - “the show with hot questions and even hotter wings” - is supposed to work.
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