Former late-night host Conan O’Brien was completely unhinged on the season finale of ‘Hot Ones,’ quickly going viral after he poured and rubbed hot sauce on himself, chugged from the bottle (and milk) while host Sean Evans looked on in shock.
Conan O’Brien survived his hilarious appearance on Hot Ones, and even conquered the gauntlet by tackling each of the sauces. It was a wild and unhinged performance that quickly went viral — and had his friend worried that he’d died.
The comedian opened up about his appearance, and the grisly aftermath, on the latest episode of his own Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast, alongside cohosts Sona Movsesian and Matt Gourley. While he loved his fans sharing moments from the show, making it go viral, he felt bad for his close friends.
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“I had a bunch of friends who saw my name all over Twitter and the first assumption is, ‘He’s dead,'” he said on the podcast. “I did have people say, ‘Oh my God, I thought, ‘Finally!'”
As for his physical reactions to ingesting those increasingly hotter wing sauces, O’Brien joked that he found a disgusting way to make his body’s “fire” useful.
“I found a construction site where they were doing spot welding, and I went there. And I said, ‘Gentlemen, if you want, I can weld these girders for you in, I’m guessing, about 15 minutes,” he quipped.
Not stopping there, the former Late Night and Tonight Show host continued, “You’ll need to avert your eyes because I’ll be dropping my pants.”
“So there’s a building in the Mid-Wilshire district that’s going up, and I think I did about 65 rivets in the building,” he laughed. “People were driving by saying, ‘Conan O’Brien’s pants are around his ankles, and I think fire is shooting out of his ass, and he’s welding a building.'”
In truth, he said his symptoms were actually more external reactions to the sauces touching his skin. As part of his overreaction to the sauces on the show, O’Brien at one point included him rubbing the sauce on his face and chest.
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He said that his mouth was physically sore and his eyes “incredibly runny” from the experience. He also had an unexpected reaction under his wedding ring.
“You wash your hands right afterwards, but some of the sauce got underneath my wedding ring,” he shared. “I noticed that my wedding ring was burning… I took it off and I was like, ‘Oh right, there’s acid underneath it.'”
He said that he committed to the bit and his appearance despite not being a huge partaker of hot sauces. In fact, he said he generally avoids all spicy foods, so he was definitely underprepared for this one. Nevertheless, “If I think something will be funny, I’ll do it and deal with it later.”
He said he went into the experience ready to go all in, determined to take on all of the wings “and just go for it and make a fool of myself.” The result was arguably one of the best and funniest Hot Ones episodes yet.
