Hot ones, a cheap YouTube program, take 15 seasons competing with the Talk Shows of the Great Leagues. His presenter is not an illustrious son of David Letterman Legend of the evening night programs, but his last guest was Matt Damon and the most seen episode has 93 million reproductions. What is your secret? The hot sauce.
The idea of the creators was to make an entertainment interview program, “but good”. It is known that the United States loves its celebrities, although the more they like they are out of the red carpet, those moments when they can identify themselves with them. That’s why Chris Schonberger, Director of the YouTube First We Feast, thought it would be a great idea than during the conversation -with prepared, with complex questions-, actors, actresses, musicians and chefs eaten 10 chicken wings whose itching, product Of the sauces, it was increasing until reaching 2,000,000 on the SCOVILLE scale. To get an idea, that is the itch of the most aggressive fourth Chile in the world. Neither the best-gifted interpreter can control his reactions to him before such an experience.
The last ingredient for the recipe of success was the presenter. Schonberger proposed Sean Evans, a white, bald man, from then 30, take charge of the program. Bingo. Evans, nominated this year to the best presenter at the Daytime Emmy – the award for the daytime productions – has worked perfectly thanks to the fact that he manages to remain imperturbable while he eats the same spicy wings as the guests him. He presses them with an exquisite warmth to respond when they cry, spit, curse, and even suck milk through the nostrils as well as calm downhill.
It sounds quite absurd, and a little it is, but the conversation is interesting and humanity and spontaneity that achieve the meeting, even more. Some 200 famous have accepted the challenge, leaving unique moments in popular culture. In the United States, more than 500 series were taking place and about 300 teleperiality programs per year before the pandemic. Any content that looks like the head in that torrent is a portent. If it does it without a considerable budget, it brushes the miracle.
The famous and temperamental cook Gordon Ramsay, who has 16 Michelin 16 stars, was one of the guests. He argued that his children convinced him to participate. He started, faithful to his trade, criticizing the quality of the wings while narrating nightmare battles in the kitchen or chef master. The man who achieved his fame on television destroying with bad modes the kitchens of half the United Kingdom ended up pleasing to go to the bathroom – that he did – and confessing that he did not cry both from a funeral of the gastronomic critic Adrian Anthony Gill. Finally, he demonstrated his vulnerability.
With the actors and actresses, something peculiar happens. Evans faces people who carefully challenge his will. Disciplined professionals who learn to dance ballet in six months or lose or earn kilos to get a role. Most are, in addition, extremely competitive. They usually reach the program with an air of superiority and do not contemplate surrender: There is a list of “shame hall” for those who say they eat the 10 wings, where the vast majority are men. Actor Shia Labeouf, the bad boy of Hollywood, challenged Evans to put even more spicy sauce to the wings to show … something. He ended up shivering, crying, and recognizing that Hot One “is a real program” and does not use “tomato sauce to cheat people”.
The success of the show, which currently does not need advertisers thanks to the sale of the hot sauces they make, reached a milestone this year in the entertainment industry. Saturday Night Live, an institution of comedy in the United States, performed a skit parodying Hot Ones. Comedian Mikey Day played Evans and Maya Rudolph played Beyoncé, in which the music diva succumbed, completely sweaty, to the itchiness of the wings and passed the questions. Many of those interviewed do the same, claiming that they can no longer focus on anything other than relieving the itch. When this happens, the production offers them milk, rice, beer, or whatever it takes. Nothing seems to work.
Hot Ones has reached the point where it has a television version, morphed into a game show, and partnered with Reebok to create a special line of sneakers. It is something like the American dream of YouTubers, although they have continued their independent path on the platform. It started as a five-minute space and now there are guests, like Justin Timberlake, who are living for half an hour. His two greatest achievements have been showing that it is possible to compete on an equal footing with the giants of the industry when you have a quality product and that Charlize Theron is from another planet. Not a tear shed the award-winning actress.
