Explicit

BONUS: Big Break at Complex w/ Sean Evans

Published Mar 27, 2024, 10:00 AM

This is a exclusive bonus clip of my conversation with Sean Evans. We talk about Sean's career journey into Complex and how "Hot Ones" changed the game of celebrity interviews. 

With a regard what is your title journalist chicken journalists, I would say, just like tea, I would just say hosts, and I would just say host host. I know, I'm a host.

I'm a host.

Let's say, how did you get into hosting?

So I did go to college for broadcast journalism. I went to the University of Illinois, and then after that I had a job as a copywriter. But I always kind of wanted to keep my eye of the tiger, you know. I was like working this job working with older ladies you know that are moms, and like, you know, it just didn't feel like I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

So I'd always take freelance ladies.

What do you mean?

It was just like I'd have nothing in common with anyone around me. Like I wasn't a younger, you know what I mean.

It was like very you were with a dustier generation.

Yeah, exactly.

So it just didn't feel like I was doing what I was supposed to be doing at that time. So I would take any this is a Chicago yeah, And I would take any freelance magazine sort of project that I could get.

You know what I mean. As a journalist.

Yeah, a lot of times they'd want to do print print exactly. So they'd want to, you know, if there was like an interview with a player on Chicago Bulls or a chef in Chicago or whatever, and they'd want to put it in print, they could outsource kind of like a boots on the ground person to do that.

So I would be grant Derek Grose actually Eric Yeah, okay.

And then in twenty fourteen, there was an All Star Weekend in New Orleans and I was doing all these interviews that were supposed to be in print or you know, on digital or in the magazine. And back then every magazine turned into like a YouTube channel, so they were like, can we put these interviews on camera just because we literally just need to put videos on the channel.

And I was like sure.

You know, like at that time in my life, if I had a two Chains interview on YouTube, that'd be like the best thing that's ever happened in my whole pathetic career, you know. So I was like, please do it, and I kind of thought it would be a one off. Did that weekend, did a bunch of interviews on camera. They put them out and then liked them enough to offer me a full time job. So quit whatever I was doing in Chicago, sold all my shit, broke my least, moved out to New York thirty days later, and then started working at complex And then about a year into that, I started working on the first f side of things.

We had to come up with a show. We were in that revie is.

Like Complexes Food division or something. It's like munchies for vice perfect co perfect corollary. So started working with them. We had to come up with the show. We're in the magazine office.

You see celebrities walk in the halls all the time, so we're like, maybe we can do a celebrity interview show just because of our proximity to it. And then we needed a food element, and then also solved the problem celebrity interviews are boring. You know, why are they boring? Because everyone's in a pr driven flight pattern. What can we do to disrupt that? Chris Schoenberger was like, well, what if we had them eat increasingly spicy chicken wings over the course of the interview as a way to break them down? And then that was a cupid Zaro and my brain and we shot a pilot with Tony Yeo and had you in.

The first or second season.

I remember Yo from the g Units.

Yeah, shot the pilot with him and then we haven't stopped shooting it since since.

Been like, it's such a hit.

Yeah, it's such a hit. There's people that come up to me on the street and they don't even know what I do. They just know my interview from Hot Ones.

But that is an iconic episode that isn't the pantheon of great Oh is.

It up there in the top ten? Yeah? Yeah, definitely, I think because I get who's number One's the number one?

That's a great meme. Gordon Ramsay's episode has I never saw that one. It's amazing it.

Will said. I loved Guy Fieri's because yes, he took spice I think better than anyone I saw on the show.

Yeah, he was great. He was great.

Alton Brown and Guy Fieri, the guys that had food knowledge and know how, seemed to handle spice the best, I think. And I really thought it was almost like a mental game.

You know what I think it is is because I have it too. It's a familiarity. You know a lot of people when they come on show. The spiciest meal they've ever had in their lives is and then they're doing it in this bizarre context of having all these cameras and lights on them, you know what I mean. So all of that can be kind of shocking in.

The right but Chef, but I mean the bomb and those like those last doors are are I don't know how Guy Fieri or Alton Brown can even like mental process their way out of it. It's like they're not It's they're just like acid, right, sulphuric acid right, that's uh. The second time I did the show, I was like laid out on the floor.

Well, I feel for you because.

But worse than the first time, because I think I got a little cocky and I didn't go like the coolio ri ip route, Like I didn't fucking douse it. But I still was not as cautious as the first time, and I was fucking toast.

You were just pouring saw.

I was really I was really in a world of hers that throw out my body and it was like I took my g I track a couple of days.

Afterwards to check it.

That was horrible. It was fucking horrible. I mean, what is what is spice? Is it like is it like a chemical compound?

Yeah, yeah, and it.

Does singular chemical compound that they all share, all the peppers share.

There's uh, you know, we order the we order the sauces by the Scoville scale, So there actually is a mathematical way scientific scale.

What is it actually measured? So it's measuring like is there like like weed has THHC.

Capsation, So that's a capsation per unit, is like how you'd get Scoville rating? Right, So then you have, yeah, this act of chemical that's sending a message to your brain that you know, your tongue is on fire.

And how were you able to tolerate such a high through practice episode? Are you were like a mess? Yeah?

Yeah, yeah when you first started, and we didn't think that we'd be programming it regularly, we thought maybe utterly.

Kind of kind of events. Yeah. So and how successful is it?

Like?

What are the what are the number? Is it can brag a little bit?

Total is over two billion views?

And wow, we're starting our twenty second season and we've shot over three hundred episodes and you have the hot sauce on top of that, and it's been kind of a perfect creative endeavor.

Yeah, you know why because it's relatable. It's relatable all over the world, and you do what I try to do on my shows. You get guests out of their comfort zone. And it's very rare to see celebrities out of their comfort zone exactly like you say that pr flight pattern, and when you do see it, it's like amazing and everybody can relate to, like trying to eat spicier and spicy. My eight year old niece at her birthday was like eating peppers and like we're at a Thai restaurant. She's like, you dare me to eat it? And her friend was like yeah, and then she was like a spicy It's like everybody goes through that. So I actually think spice is the first drug that you use as a chop besides caffeine, besides Coca cola, and spices the first drug.

It's a amount with in the sober community.

Like if I go to a hot Sauce expo, it'll kind of look like the parking lot of a Slayer concert a little bit.

They can get high without getting and I do.

Now frequently get a weightlessness.

Oh yeah, feeling you have so many endorphins released. Why yeah, at that spicy head high.

Yeah.

I wouldn't say it's fun, but it's something.

It's gotten there for me.

You know.

When I first started, I wouldn't get there.

And now, like almost every episode around Wing eight, I'm floating.

It's great.

Josh, have you ever gotten a endosco beclenoscaped? To make sure that you.

I always go to the doctor. I haven't done that yet, but I have them do every blood test and hooked me up to everything really figure out what's going on.

I just recently I turned forty, so I went up my button around the corner and the doctor said, I was all right.

At least it wasn't in vain, you know, at least, yeah, it was.

You gotta do it when you and the dot my physical I.

Got my first finger, yeah bug in the butt.

The doctor goes, whoa you turn forty? You know what that means? And I was like, hey on, doc, I just got to call it. Then I look back to both those guns are in the air, just like that hobby with a recondre

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