Sean Evans | |
|---|---|
 Evans in 2021 | |
| Born | April 26, 1986 Evanston, Illinois, U.S. |
| Education | University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (BA) |
| Occupation(s) | YouTuber, producer |
| Years active | 2014–present |
Sean Evans (born April 26, 1986) [1] is an American YouTuber who is best known for co-creating and hosting the series Hot Ones , in which he interviews celebrities as they eat progressively spicier chicken wings.
Sean Evans was born in the Chicago suburb of Evanston to Michael Evans and Donna Arthofer. He has a brother named Gavin. Evans is a 2004 graduate of Crystal Lake Central High School, where he played football and baseball. [2] [3] He graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign [4] in 2008 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in broadcast journalism, where a professor suggested he become a weatherman. [5] [6] He grew up looking up to the interviewing prowess of Howard Stern, Jimmy Kimmel, David Letterman, and Adam Carolla. [7] One of his earliest memories, he says, is his father taping Letterman during the week and binge-watching them all on a Saturday. [8]
Before working as an interviewer, Evans was a copywriter for the Chicago tourism board. During that time, he freelanced for Complex Magazine , doing on-screen interviews with celebrities such as 2 Chainz and Steph Curry in New Orleans. Complex liked his interviews and offered him a full-time job, so he quit his copywriting job and moved to New York a month later. [6]
Evans is the host of Hot Ones, which he co-created with Chris Schonberger, the General Manager of First We Feast, the former Complex Media property that produces the show. [9] Hot Ones' tagline is, "It's the show with hot questions, and even hotter wings", and Evans repeats it in the intro to each episode. New episodes normally come out Thursdays at 11 a.m. ET. [8]
The idea for Hot Ones sprang from a meeting in which Evans and Schonberger were brainstorming ways to create a fresh take on the celebrity interview. In a 2022 Vanity Fair profile about Evans, Schonberger described the initial discussions about a hot wing interview show: "I just thought it was funny ... Then we kind of saw this magic happen in the room". Evans and Schonberger realized that the concept carried an added feature: the hot sauce helped break down guests' inhibitions and encouraged them to set aside the usual late night TV-style talking points. [10] Evans has said, "Celebrity is so unobtainable by definition, you know. But what's more common man than dying on hot sauce?" [11]
The format of the show, which regularly amasses millions of views per episode on YouTube, involves Evans and his guest eating 10 chicken wings, or vegan substitutes, each doused in a different hot sauce that is spicier than the one before it. [10] In each season of the show, the lineup of hot sauces changes, with the exception of the eighth wing (Da Bomb Beyond Insanity) and the 10th wing (The Last Dab, a sauce created by Hot Ones and the Brooklyn-based hot sauce company Heatonist). The term "the last dab" refers to the show's tradition of Evans and his guest "dabbing" each final wing with an extra dollop of the namesake sauce.
Evans has interviewed hundreds of celebrities, including Shaquille O'Neal, Conan O'Brien, Ed Sheeran, Justin Timberlake, Cate Blanchett, Billie Eilish, Matt Damon, Kevin Hart, Kristen Stewart, Gordon Ramsay, Post Malone, Dua Lipa, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Joji, Scarlett Johansson, Noel Gallagher, Salma Hayek, and Jimmy Kimmel among others. [12] Evans' episode, in 2019, with Paul Rudd spawned the meme, "Look at us. Who would have thought? Not me." [7] [13]
Other videos for First We Feast include teaming up with Chili Klaus, another spicy food internet personality, to eat a Carolina Reaper pepper, a record-breaking chili pepper (1,569,300 Scovilles) grown by chili pepper guru Smokin' Ed Currie. [6] Evans and Klaus reunited to eat the pepper a second time, that time while riding on a horse carriage in Central Park. [6]
In 2020, Evans began hosting Hot Ones: The Game Show, a trivia game show based on Hot Ones that aired on TruTV. [14]
In 2021, Mikey Day impersonated Evans in a Saturday Night Live skit where Maya Rudolph plays Beyoncé in a spoof episode of Hot Ones and ends up having a meltdown due to not being able to handle the spiciness. [15] A year later, in June 2022, Evans did a cameo as himself in an episode of Apple TV+ show Loot , where the main character, also played by Rudolph, does the Hot Ones interview and ends up having a meltdown due to not being able to handle the spiciness.
On May 25, 2021, Evans was nominated for the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Entertainment Talk Show Host at the 48th Daytime Emmy Awards. [16] He has won internet entertainment awards including the Shorty, the Lovie, and the Webby. [6] Evans has appeared on Good Morning America , The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon , Jimmy Kimmel Live! , The Late Show with Stephen Colbert , and The View .
On July 19, 2019, the Chicago native threw out the first pitch at a Cubs-Pirates game at Wrigley Field. [17]
In a 2021 interview with Esquire , Evans addressed the future of the show this way: "I do feel in some ways closer to the end of it than the beginning. We have been doing it for a long time and I'm not sure there's anything that I'm leaving on the table. Hot Ones has already done 10 laps around any expectation that I ever had for it ... So it's in a spot where I'm just doing something that I really enjoy doing. So I'm committed to Hot Ones for as long as the fans will allow it." [7]
In December 2024, the show was purchased from BuzzFeed for US$82.5 million by an investment group that included Evans, Schonberger, Mythical Entertainment, Crooked Media, and George Soros. [18]
Vietnamese cuisine encompasses the foods and beverages originated from Vietnam. Meals feature a combination of five fundamental tastes : sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and spicy. The distinctive nature of each dish reflects one or more elements, which are also based around a five-pronged philosophy. Vietnamese recipes use ingredients like lemongrass, ginger, mint, Vietnamese mint, long coriander, Saigon cinnamon, bird's eye chili, lime, and Thai basil leaves. Traditional Vietnamese cooking has often been characterised as using fresh ingredients, not using much dairy or oil, having interesting textures, and making use of herbs and vegetables. The cuisine is also low in sugar and is almost always naturally gluten-free, as many of the dishes are rice-based instead of wheat-based, made with rice noodles, rice papers and rice flour.
A Buffalo wing in American cuisine is an unbreaded chicken wing section that is generally deep-fried, then coated or dipped in a sauce consisting of a vinegar-based cayenne pepper hot sauce and melted butter prior to serving. They are traditionally served hot, along with celery sticks and carrot sticks, and a dip of blue cheese dressing or, primarily outside of New York, ranch dressing. Buffalo wings are named after Buffalo, New York, where they were invented, and have no relation to the animal. They are often called simply chickenwings, hot wings, or just wings.
James Christian Kimmel is an American television host, comedian, writer, and producer. He has been the host and executive producer of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, a late-night talk show, since 2003. Kimmel has hosted the Primetime Emmy Awards three times, in 2012, 2016 and 2020, and the Academy Awards four times, in 2017, 2018, 2023, and 2024.
The McChicken is a chicken burger sold by the international fast food restaurant McDonald's. It consists of a toasted wheat bun, a breaded patty, shredded lettuce and mayonnaise.
Robin Douglas Leach was a British-American entertainment reporter and writer from London. After beginning his career as a print journalist, first in Britain and then in the United States, he became best known for hosting the television series Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous from 1984 to 1995. The show focused on profiling well-known celebrities and their lavish homes, cars and other materialistic details.
An Italian beef is a sandwich, originating in Chicago, made from thin slices of roast beef simmered and served au jus on French bread. Common toppings are a choice between spicy giardiniera or mild bell peppers. The entire sandwich is traditionally dipped in the juice the meat is cooked in before serving with a side of French fries.
A dip or dip sauce is a common condiment for many types of food. Dips are used to add flavor or texture to a food, such as pita bread, dumplings, crackers, chopped raw vegetables, fruits, seafood, cubed pieces of meat and cheese, potato chips, tortilla chips, falafel, and sometimes even whole sandwiches in the case of jus. Unlike other sauces, instead of applying the sauce to the food, the food is typically placed or dipped into the sauce.
Tony Packo's Cafe is a restaurant that started in the Hungarian neighborhood of Birmingham, on the east side of Toledo, Ohio, at 1902 Front Street.
An Italian hot dog is a type of hot dog popular in New Jersey, United States, made by Jimmy Buff and his wife Mary Racioppi. His family continues the restaurant Jimmy Buff's to this day. Other restaurants like Joe Joe's Italian Hot Dog in Toms River serve Italian hot dogs but Jimmy Buff's is nonetheless most widely known in New Jersey as the restaurant that first served Italian hot dogs and is most famous for their Italian hot dog.
Hulatang, also known as hot pepper soup or spicy soup, is a kind of Chinese traditional soup originated in Henan Province, and became popularized in both Henan and Shaanxi Province. Chinese immigrants have introduced it to the United States, where it is known as "spicy soup". It can be divided into two different versions in Henan: Xiaoyaozhen version and Beiwudu version. As its name—literally the characters 'pepper' + 'capsicum/chilli' + 'soup'—implies, capsicum and black pepper are put into the broth made by beef soup.
Hot chicken is a type of fried chicken that is a local specialty of Nashville, Tennessee, in the United States. In its typical preparation, it is a portion of breast, thigh or wing that has been marinated in a water-based blend of seasoning, floured, fried and finally covered in a paste or sauce that has been spiced with cayenne pepper. This method of preparation originates within African American communities in the Southern United States. A richly pigmented seasoning paste gives the fried chicken its reddish hue. Spice blends, preparation methods and heat intensity vary from recipe to recipe or depending on the chef.
Hot Ones is an American YouTube talk show, created by Sean Evans and Chris Schonberger, hosted by Evans and produced by First We Feast and formerly Complex Media. Its basic premise involves celebrities being interviewed by Evans over a platter of increasingly spicy chicken wings. Several spin-offs have been produced, including the game show Hot Ones: The Game Show on the cable television network TruTV, and Truth or Dab, a truth or dare style competition that also airs on the First We Feast YouTube channel.
Claus Pilgaard, also known as Chili Klaus or Klaus Wunderhits, is a Danish musician and entertainer. He is best known for his Chilismagning series on the internet and on television. For the series, he invites celebrities and other notable figures on several occasions to eat chili peppers with him. One video in particular, where television presenter Bubber participated in the video, received around 2 million views on YouTube. Internationally, he is known for his collaborations with Sean Evans on his Hot Ones series on the First We Feast YouTube channel. Pilgaard has received numerous awards for his videos.
First We Feast is an online food-culture magazine and YouTube channel. The site co-produces the YouTube series Hot Ones. The company began as off-shoot of Complex Media, its parent company until 2024. In 2024, BuzzFeed sold Complex to NTWRK, an e-commerce company backed by Live Nation Entertainment and Main Street Advisors, but retained First We Feast. Shortly after, in December 2024, the company was sold by BuzzFeed to a group of investors, including Soros Fund Management, Sean Evans, and founder Chris Schonberger for $82.5 million.
Ed Currie is an American chili pepper breeder who is the founder and president of the PuckerButt Pepper Company. He is best known for breeding the Carolina Reaper which was the hottest chili pepper in the world until, in 2023, Pepper X, also bred by Currie, took over as the hottest chili pepper, as recognized by Guinness World Records.
Nudi Noodle Place, or simply Nudi, is an Asian restaurant in Portland, Oregon.
Lemon pepper wings are unbreaded chicken wings coated in lemon pepper seasoning. The dish was invented in Atlanta, Georgia, and is considered to be emblematic of the cuisine of Atlanta.
"Conan O'Brien Needs a Doctor While Eating Spicy Wings" is the twelfth and final episode of the twenty-third season of the American talk show Hot Ones. The episode premiered on YouTube on April 11, 2024. In the episode, host Sean Evans interviews television host and comedian Conan O'Brien.
You know that Chernobyl happened on my actual birthday, April 26, 1986.
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