Plenty of stars have been up for Sean Evans’ challenge on Hot Ones, but there are more he’d like to see take the heat.
“We’ve caught so many of the dream guests along the way that I don’t even know if there’s like a white whale at the moment or someone who seems unobtainable,” the Hot Ones host, 39, exclusively told Luxury Handbag Shopping at YouTube Brandcast 2025 on Wednesday, May 14. “But you know, fans really want Keanu Reeves.”
Evans noted that he had just seen Reeves in the latest John Wick installment, Ballerina, and thought it was “incredible,” so he agrees with the fans that Reeves would be a fantastic guest on Hot Ones.
In addition to bringing new faces to the Hot Ones table, Evans also would “love” to bring back some familiar faces.
“I love bringing people on a second time,” he told Us about having repeat guests. “Let’s bring Conan [O’Brien] back, see if he can match that same energy.”
Evans added he thinks Paul Rudd is “long overdue” for a return. While Gordon Ramsay has appeared on the YouTube series multiple times already, Evans confessed that they “can never get sick of Gordon.”
Dave Grohl is another guest Evans would like to see back. The internet personality recalled getting the chance to hang out with the Foo Fighters frontman after his episode wrapped up.
“I remember after the show cut, he invited me to his premiere. The next night, we stayed in L.A., went to the premiere, then he had a friends and family show afterwards, or the Foo Fighters performed,” Evans recalled. “And it’s kind of one of those things where if you do Hot Ones, we either become friends for life or they never wanna see me again.”
Evans created Hot Ones alongside Chris Schonberger in 2015. On the YouTube talk show, Evans interviews a series of guests while the pair eat hot wings with sauces at various spice levels that continue to increase in temperature. Hot Ones is currently in its 27th season.
Since the start of the series, Evans knew that he had created something special, but it took a second for it to become mainstream.
“So I knew from the earliest shoots that we had that it was different, that it was unique, that it was something special just because [of] the way people were reacting in the studio,” he recalled. “I’d never seen a show like that.”
While Hot Ones didn’t achieve millions of views right away, it did gain traction after Keegan Michael Key and Jordan Peele made an appearance on season 2.
“I knew that it would be a hit if anyone ever watched it in the beginning, no one watched it,” Evans told Us. “So it wasn’t until the Key and Peele episode where it kind of broke containment, got huge, and we’ve been off to the races ever since then.”
