Where Is Hot Ones Filmed?
If you ever find yourself bored while watching a celebrity interview, chances are you weren't watching Hot Ones. The YouTube show is a cult favorite and for very good reason, as it confronts celebrities with increasingly spicy hot wings while host Sean Evans asks them questions. If you think it sounds easy, think again; one of the sauces featured on the show is made from the world's hottest pepper, Pepper X, which is twice as hot as the famous Carolina Reaper pepper, dubbed the hottest pepper in the world (via First We Feast). The result is a unique and authentic glimpse at famous people with their guards well and truly down. After all, who doesn't want to see their favorite celebrity sweating, pacing, and crying over hot wings? Basically no one, since the channel boasts over 8 million subscribers and over a billion views.
Since the show started, the set and style of the show haven't changed much. All of the illustrious guests, from Will Ferrell, to Gordon Ramsay, to Neil deGrasse Tyson, sit at the same black table with ten wings and a black background (via Business Insider). This minimal set gives nothing away when it comes to the actual location of filming. So, where is the show filmed?
The secret of the Hot Ones set
According to an interview in The Verge, most of the shoots — about 50 percent — are filmed in New York City at the Complex Networks offices on 43rd street, but where the remaining 50 percent are filmed might surprise you. The brilliance of the very simplistic set is that it can be easily and cheaply recreated anywhere, so you wouldn't even notice if an episode isn't filmed in the usual place. That is, unless you're watching the Stephen Colbert episode, shot at the Ed Sullivan Theater; though that was technically on The Late Show.
When not in New York, about 40 percent of the shoots take place in Los Angeles, which makes sense given their A-list interviewees. The remaining 10 percent of the episodes are filmed elsewhere, typically where the celebrity happens to be promoting their latest project. For instance, Idris Elba's episode was filmed in London, and Kevin Hart's in Hawaii while he was filming Jumanji.