Sean Evans (interviewer)

Sean Evans (born April 26, 1986) is an American YouTuber and producer who is best known for hosting the series Hot Ones, in which he interviews celebrities while they eat progressively spicier chicken wings.

Born in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Evans found fame on the Internet not only for his proficiency in celebrity interviews, but also for eating extremely hot food like the Carolina Reaper pepper, which holds the title for hottest pepper by Guinness World Records. He cites eating spicy food as a child for building up his tolerance.^[2][3] Before working as an interviewer, Evans was a copywriter for the Chicago tourism board.^[4]

Education and early career[]

Evans graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 2008 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in broadcast journalism.^[5]

Evans started freelancing for Complex Magazine in New Orleans, doing interviews for the publication and putting them on their YouTube channel, interviewing famous celebrities such as 2 Chainz and Steph Curry. The magazine offered him a full-time job in New York City, and he quickly quit his job and started a career at Complex.^[1]

Hot Ones[]

Evans is the host of Hot Ones, which was created by Chris Schonberger and produced by First We Feast and Complex Media. Its tagline, stated by Evans at the beginning of each episode, is "the show with hot questions, and even hotter wings." The show was created from a meeting between Sean Evans and Schonberger in which the two discussed potential ways to make celebrity interview shows more interesting and less clichéd. The format involves Evans and his guest eating ten chicken wings or vegan substitutes, each prepared with a progressively hotter hot sauce. Beginning in season 4, the final sauce for the 10th wing has consisted of different versions of the Hot Ones/Heatonist produced sauce "The Last Dab", each with a Scoville rating of between 2,000,000 - 3,000,000+ units.^[6] The term "the last dab" refers to the show's tradition of Evans and his guest "dabbing" each final wing with an extra drop of the corresponding hot sauce.

Evans has interviewed a number of celebrities, including Shaquille O'Neal, Sasha Banks, Marques Brownlee, Billie Eilish, Jeff Goldblum, Kevin Hart, Charlize Theron, Guy Fieri, Gordon Ramsay, Post Malone, "Weird Al" Yankovic, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Scarlett Johansson, and Paul Rudd among others.^[7]

Evans began hosting Hot Ones: The Game Show starting in early 2020, a trivia game show that aired on TruTV.^[8]

In 2021, Mikey Day impersonated Evans in a Saturday Night Live skit where Beyoncé (Maya Rudolph) did an episode of Hot Ones.^[9]

On May 25, 2021 Evans was nominated for the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Entertainment Talk Show Host at the 48th Daytime Emmy Awards.^[10]

References[]

External links[]

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• Evans, Sean interviews 2 Chainz (February 19, 2014). 2 Chainz Kicks Game About His New Adidas Sneaker Deal (YouTube). Complex News.
• Evans, Sean Interviewee (March 3, 2017). "Hi! I'm Sean Evans, host of First We Feast's Hot Ones on the YouTube. Ask me anything!". Reddit IAMA. Retrieved March 4, 2017.
• Harris, Jenn (October 20, 2016). "This guy eats hot wings with celebrities for a living. Seriously". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved November 23, 2016.
• Irish Examiner (October 11, 2016). "Kevin Hart might have the funniest Hot Ones interview yet". Irish Examiner. Retrieved November 23, 2016.
• Lynch, Kevin (19 November 2013). "Confirmed: Smokin Ed's Carolina Reaper sets new record for hottest chilli". Guinness World Records. Retrieved November 23, 2016.
• Nsubuga, Jimmy (December 6, 2015). "Watch these two guys eating the hottest pepper in the world – it looks like torture". Metro. Retrieved November 23, 2016.