uh who are some of these people that are i just i i'm just trying not to violate trust
clearly it's a sip of milk yeah yeah yeah maybe i'll just i'll plead the i'll plead the milk
well guys welcome to the ultimate sean evans interview presented by dairy farmers of america
it is a cooperative of over 11 000 dairy farmers dedicated to putting more sustainably made dairy
on your tables and sean first and foremost it's always good to see you and i assume that you're
excited because i'm here but it's also a holiday that must mean more to you than just about anybody
else it is world milk day today and june is dairy month so how excited are you for for a
holiday that uh i'm sure means more to you than me yeah you know i i don't think it gets enough
attention you know what i mean like that can fly under the radar for a lot of people but milk it's
been a such a safety net for me over the years so it's about time that we we give it the celebration
that it deserves i can't even put a number to the amount of times i've seen you reach for a glass of
milk to help cut the heat in the interviews that essentially get very hot in a different regard but
dairy farmers of america is working to find ways to keep the planet from getting too hot like using
solar energy and wind turbines to cut emissions and so i wanted to present to you these glasses
of milk to help cut some heat as well if at any time in the interview the he's already sipping
but if at any time in the interview the question gets maybe a little too hot sure feel free to take
a sip to cool things down we inverted the set you hot ones is normally on a very dark set but we're
brightening it up today uh and i just wanted to say thanks for having me here and i'm excited to
talk to you i'm excited too you know i think we have a lot of chats offline you know yeah but i
don't think we've ever sat down in any sort of like formal setting like this so i'm excited
let's go back to the origin crystal lake shawn evans chicago's very own what was full-headed hair
shawn evans like as a kid growing up overall just a really good experience good childhood good high
school experience and most of that the constant through all that was just good friends then the
u of i is is the school that you're obviously so very proud of but then the story kind of
the story of your life could have gone a bunch of different ways and i think for
a second you had an idea that it may go a different way when i graduated
uh there was no immediate sort of tv job there you know like there was no thing that was like
immediately there for me after i graduated i went back to doing architecture tours that i've done
all the way through college doing tours of the chicago river and whatnot you told me about
this so many years ago but that's something that's always interesting to me particularly because you
still have it down pat i'm not going to ask you to do it now but i've seen you just do it on command
rewinding back to those days for a second i imagine there were a bunch of celebrities that
took those tours some of which eventually wound up on hot ones that's true i'll take a sip to that i
haven't thought about this until this second i'll sit with you bro i'll sit with you yeah you're
right tyra banks didn't take one of those tours i was going to say but i wanted you to say it
now as long as we've been friends even pre-hot ones i i never
saw the food connection i wonder if you maybe all along had this vision of food or or maybe it was
working concessions at the park district that kind of got you going in the food realm
that was my first ever job was uh working at the beach and selling like popsicles to kids but no i
think in a lot of these things it was just um like it comes when it comes to hot sauce or whatever it
was just all around the show you know like i've always enjoyed restaurants i've always enjoyed
food scenes when i travel or go somewhere i like to you know figure out what is the
regional delicacy in that area and i have to get my hands on one but it's not like i was a
hot sauce guy or like they say in the key and peel episode like found something i could do and built
a whole show around it it was just something i had to build myself up to and figure out
and keep pace with even before hot ones talk to me about the beginning of the complex era you
come over from chicago just as a writer you helped spawn what was complex news at the time and it was
three of you guys it was you jinx and emily three people that i consider some of my best friends and
then here i came along as an intern at the time yeah what do you remember about the era of of
complex news pre-hot ones and maybe how that kind of helped transition you to where we are today the
way that i got the job is in all-star weekend 2014 we were supposed to do all of these interviews
right i didn't know where they were gonna live or what was gonna happen but it was right when
complex launched the youtube page and the only person they had doing on camera stuff was jinx
and so they were like hey these interviews that we're you're doing can we just put them on our
youtube page like we just need to populate this youtube page so i was like sure like please do you
know like i was i was working as a copywriter at the time and i was like if i can get a two chainz
interview on youtube that'll be the best thing that's ever happened in my entire pathetic life
liked him enough to offer me a job jack irwin uh back then shout out to jack he called me
and uh took a little bit of convincing but then yeah i ended up getting rid of my apartment
breaking my lease selling all my stuff and i was in new york 30 days later you said that you needed
some convincing to take the job in fact if i'm not mistaken you actually said no to the job at first
but then it wound up circling back and and you were convinced and you came and i'm glad that
you did so now hot ones is starting to come around i remember the first time you explained the show
to me uh i didn't quite get it like most people yeah but the main thing that i was confused about
was to me i remember vividly saying so they finished all 10 wings but there's no payoff
and you were like well yeah that's kind of the point like they go through this super tumultuous
thing just to get like 15 seconds of plug time yeah yeah and that's it that's the joke how
difficult at that time was it explaining the show because on paper it it just doesn't make sense
yeah well i thought it was like simple enough but i don't think you know and if you look early on
there's not a lot of people that really got it or like believed in it and i think that honestly
we never could have built the thing that we built if not for that i actually got stuck in the studio
for the third ever episode of hot ones which was machine gun kelly wow i was in the room for that
hot ones episode kind of by chance but i was i was stuck in there uh and it quickly went from being
stuck in there to just being enamored by what was happening and watching mgk just do laps around the
table and it was it was so peculiar to me to watch this kind of cerebral reaction to what was
happening so i remember going back to our desks at the end of that day and i remember turning
to you and just being like bro i think you got something here with your show that was when i knew
that we had something to was that shoot when he was just cursing everybody out and doing laps
around the studio and like i was just like this is so compelling in the room that i know that
it's going to translate to the video even that much better and i've never seen anything like
this now that the show's lasted long enough for me to kind of be able to look back on some things
the things that i miss about the old days are kind of just traveling around going from hotel to hotel
staying up until four o'clock in the morning like having the alarm go off at 6 30 getting all that
stuff going to the studio trying to execute a shoot and i feel like i was so naive and
delusional we were really building something and i was just bouncing around with chris all the time
now things are special to me because they represent how far we've come i remember back
in those days like when people came in they were sort of like what am i doing here what is this
freak show that you guys have going on here it was sort of half embarrassing to do the show before
and on top of that your set doesn't help you out at all no you got these black curtains and a table
and two chairs and like dominoes too like we've popped this thing up in hotel rooms before so it
like looks even kind of like sadder and weirder and crazier or we like take the couch in bed and
like move them against the wall and just pop up the set inside of a hotel room and then have like
a super famous a-list movie star like knock on the door and open it up but i think that the magic of
the show and some of my greatest memories and the testaments for doing the show are when you come
in with that kind of a setup and the guest sits down and you see on the second or third wing their
shoulders relax and then they fall in they're hooked one of the first true signs of success
uh for me was the co-sign from noriega yeah and because obviously i'm from lefrak city queens
right and i remember you kind of just showing me dms like yo bro look who just dm me it'd be
noriega you know so who are the dms now that get you excited that's what i think is funny about
hot ones is that yeah you'll have like noriega in the tent and then you'll also have like bert
kreischer in the tent stevo in the tent like tom segura in the tent like that's what i kind of
like about it is that it's this clubhouse this tree house that's just full of the biggest
craziest personalities and entertainment and then yeah i do see that reflected back at me
a little bit i announced the bears draft pick a couple weeks ago in vegas and i walk to the
green room and i see keegan michael key first like huge episodes that we ever had and when i
see him he's you know just immediately taken back to that moment like sean people to this day still
talk to me about that interview you know like that you know like doing all that so i feel like once
you leave the show you're just like forever in the clubhouse because it is that bizarre experience in
this tent you you didn't name any of these a-list celebrities uh who are some of these people i just
i i'm just trying not to violate trust that's a sip of milk yeah yeah yeah maybe i'll just
i'll plead the i'll plead the milk what's had a steeper decline hot ones recreation attempts
or your invites to media basketball runs my invites to media basketball runs i felt like
i used to get those all the time and i don't know what happened but like they stopped inviting me
and it's kind of like i don't even understand it but you get invited to that i do which is why i
brought it up though i remember the recreation attempts being uh such an integral and pivotal
point in the history of hot ones because i remember how blatantly you would disrespect
back the people like i feel like the show is too successful now for anyone to try to recreate it
does this still really happen i have a totally different relationship with it now than i did
back when i was wiling now the show has gone on long enough you know years hundreds of episodes
i feel like most people who are gonna find it who are or were gonna care about it have already found
it you know what i mean can you give me the mount rushmore of hot ones guests who canceled hold on
i'll plead the milk on that because and i'll tell you why
maybe they'll come back around because that's happening this doesn't say that
they can't come around it it was just a not now you know it's not a never
sip up when you watch back some of your episodes of hot ones uh what is an episode or what are
some episodes that you look at your performance and you're like i hate the way i delivered that
question or i wish i would have sequenced this better so early on i don't think we took the
interview as seriously certainly not as seriously as we do now so there's uh an interview with like
anthony rizzo in season one that i cannot watch because i just cringe at myself so hard there's
only been one time that i can think of that i've felt really let down by you disappear okay
just go ahead and grab the milk you really let me down one time in my life as a friend especially
as someone who played the pitching mini game of mvp baseball 2005 as much as you did yeah yeah to
watch you get on the mount and [ __ ] sail this pitch yeah 30 feet to the right of well it was
it was just it was just high it was just high what happened dog i will say that this last summer
i did one for the white sox and it was just a perfect strike perfect strike but here's what
happened in my defense and there is no defense but here's what happened in my defense it was like a
hundred degrees it was like the hottest day but they needed me in the murakami jacket so i had
that jacket on they have like 50 people behind home plate so you run out there to the mound
and you're so excited and then you look over and trying to find the catchers like trying to find
waldo you know there's like a billion people that are right there i remember the coach at the time
madden for the cubs he was like just don't bounce it so all of those things were in my head i grip
it brand new baseball it's very slippery very smooth very polished surface so i let it rip and
then it just stayed high and probably like slammed off that like brick backstop like it was bad
what an excuse that was it was so illustrious but i'm not buying anything i thought about it a lot
throwing out the first pitch cardboard cutout at the super bowl yeah being on the celeb cam on
the jumbotron at a hockey game yeah announcing an nfl pick i saw you with benny the bull yup
tops baseball card yeah madden commercial yeah super bowl 52 pregame show are you like jackie
moon like what well i think the only reason i do anything that i do is just to infiltrate
the teams that i grew up watching so yeah i feel like i caught them all at this point
outside of actual accomplishments in the show and whatnot those are my favorite
things that i've done but i can't express how many times i've heard you tell people
that your goal in life was to be a game show host and you've done it any tangible goal
that i've heard you say out of your mouth has been accomplished and so i'm wondering have you started
to think about the intangible goals i'm not really a goal person because i've already kind of done
five or ten laps around any expectation i ever had for myself so it's all
house money now so yeah i don't know my only goal is to make the next episode that we have
worth watching for people and then the one after that worth watching for people what percent of
the success of the show do you think is you what percent of the show do you think is the
spice what percent do you think is like just the current state of media and maybe the decline of
what once was those things all have kind of an equal share you know i think that hook is unique
it has a quality about it where celebrity is this lifestyle that by definition is unobtainable but
here on this show you get to see some of the most famous people on the planet eating a wing coated
into bomb beyond insanity going bright red and tearing from the eyes you know you never see that
especially with images that are are so carefully protected at all times i will be as bold enough
to say is that i do think it is an excellent interview show in the state of interview shows
like i really i really do believe that i believe that it's more than anyone should ever expect from
a chickenwing talk show on youtube how much of the continuation of this show do you think is you just
chasing the dragon i think of hot ones as catching lightning in a bottle you know i really do and i
don't take any of that for granted now that i work around people that i love now that the show is in
a place that is just humming there's nothing else i'd rather do there's nobody in entertainment that
i'd switch places with like i really love what i do and it feels a very comfortable place for me
and it feels like there's plenty more runway how much longer you think it lasts
as long as i can do it as long as people will have me i think i'm gonna do it all right well shout
out to dairy farmers of america for making this happen sean let's let's toast real quick with milk
i can't think of another time in my whole life that i've toasted with milk but
being that it does all that it does it helps you cut the heat on hot ones and
you know dairy farmers of america are also helping cut emissions
in our world i'm down to cheers with milk for that so salute to dairy farmers of america for helping
us do this interview and thank you for being a good friend thank you speedy right back at you doc
thank you for doing this bro give me some love man i'll be doggie
you