Crystal Lake's Evans' fame has grown with 'Hot Ones'

Sean Evans and Christopher Schonberger were challenged about five years ago with establishing a video brand for the digital magazine “First We Feast.”

The magazine was produced in the Complex Media building in New York City, which, through Complex’s other media productions, generated a steady stream of rappers, entertainers and athletes roaming its halls.

“There were all these people we had access to, but we didn’t know what we exactly could do with them,” Evans said. “We were forced to come up with an idea, and come up with it quick. Christopher was like, ‘What if we had celebrities eat violently hot chicken wings over the course of the interview as a way to break them down?’ ”

Schonberger, the editor-in-chief of “First We Feast,” had the food background. Evans, a 2004 Crystal Lake Central graduate and a writer for Complex, had the interviewing skills … and the stomach.

“Hot Ones” was born.

The show quickly developed a cult following, with Evans calmly downing some of the spiciest wings on the planet and asking questions while his interviewees sweated and struggled, gulping down various beverages to extinguish the fires in their mouths.

“We were really an interview show first, then what we wanted was a disruptive element, something to take our celebrity guests and knock them right out of their PR-driven flight pattern,” Evans said.

Mission accomplished.

The YouTube show grew from its initial cult audience in 2015 to an internet sensation. “Hot Ones” prepares for its 12th season this summer in which Evans will add to his list of “victims” that includes Shaquille O’Neal, Charlize Theron, Paul Rudd, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Terry Crews, Shia LaBeouf and, one of Evans’ favorites, world-renown chef Gordon Ramsay.

The wings get progressively hotter throughout the interview, although Evans and others all say that No. 8 (Da Bomb) is far worse than No. 10 (The Dab).

Mike Evans marvels at the career his 34-year-old son has made.

“It’s terrific. It’s certainly nothing that he planned to do,” Mike Evans said. “It’s a combination of a lucky break coupled with the willingness to work hard and the gumption to go grab it. I tell people he turned an eating disorder into a career. It’s really a lot more complicated than that.”

Christian Keller grew up down the street from Evans and has been friends with him since age 5. Keller, an anatomy and biology teacher and assistant football coach at Palatine High School, often hears comments from his students who watch the show and know he is friends with Evans.

“They’re like, ‘Man, he’s got the gig. All he has to do is sit around and eat hot wings with celebrities,’ ” Keller said. “I’m always quick to say, ‘Oh, there’s quite a bit more than that.’ ”

Evans describes “Hot Ones” as a food/pop culture hybrid with the food as the background character. The combination proven to be a huge success.

“It’s not like we had all these crazy high hopes for the show, but we did believe in it and believe in ourselves,” Evans said. “The audience wasn’t big at first, but it was cult. [The fans] had an appetite for the content, and we just kept feeding them.”

Go Tigers!

Evans grew up in Crystal Lake and played baseball and football. Baseball was the sport he truly loved, and he played with the Crystal Lake Cyclones travel team.

Evans was a backup outfielder on Central’s 2003 team, possibly the best in school history. Jeff Aldridge, now Central’s athletic director, was the coach and took that team to the IHSA Class AA State Tournament, where the Tigers lost to Boylan, 7-4, in the quarterfinals.

That Central team turned out six NCAA Division I players and another who thrived at D-II. Evans has vivid memories of the Tigers’ quarterfinal loss, which ended with him as a pinch runner who would have tied the game.

The bases were loaded with two outs in the bottom of the seventh, and sophomore Quinn Ewert was batting. Ewert ripped a shot to left field, and Titans left fielder Sean Thomas turned the wrong way, then turned back around and ran the ball down with a backhanded catch and his back to home plate, only a few feet from the fence.

“Quinn squared up that ball really well, and I started running like crazy,” said Evans, who was on first base. “Coach Aldridge puts up his hands [with a fist], and that means, ‘Slow down.’ So it’s the third out or it’s over the fence. My back was to the play. I was forever the optimist. I took my helmet off and launched it in the air and started celebrating because I thought Quinn just hit a walk-off grand slam to win in the state tournament.

“Pat Minogue grabbed me and held me tight and goes, ‘Bro, he caught it. It was sick.’ I’ll never forget that. A very high school moment. One of the great rides of my life. It was awesome.”

Evans is a White Sox fan but gladly accepted an invitation to Wrigley Field last season to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at a Cubs game. He asked Cubs manager Joe Maddon for advice and was told, “Aim high and throw hard. Don’t bounce it in.”

Evans heeded Maddon’s words, air-mailing the ball almost to the backstop.

Always blending in

Evans likes to say he could sit at any lunch table and feel comfortable, a trait that suits him well as an interviewer. He attended DePaul for two years, then transferred to Illinois as a broadcast journalism major.

Keller and his future wife, Kaitlyn, were students at Illinois. When Evans hung around their friends, he fit fight in.

“He was always quick-witted, had a good sense of humor,” Keller said. “He was always good with words, always writing stuff down. We’d be hanging out and he could spew off 6 minutes of things he had written, kind of entertaining-wise. In the city, he did some architectural tours and researched buildings and architects and all of that. Those are things now, we can look back, and it’s no wonder he’s able to do that now.”

Evans’ sense of humor and ability to think fast, along with his level of preparedness, allow him to jump from Theron to Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele to Post Malone to Stone Cold Steve Austin and adeptly ask questions while munching on eyes-watering, nose-running madness.

Keller is blown away by Evan’s cool demeanor.

“I don’t know if I could sit across the table from some of these people and actually speak,” Keller said. “I would be so starstruck. ‘How do you sit across the table from Gordon Ramsay? You used to love him.’ All these guys he grew up idolizing, and he’s sitting there interviewing him.”

The art of interviewing

Evans earns high praise for his interviewing skills. His guests frequently respond to a question with something like “How did you know about that?” To which Evans just smiles.

Evans remembers a story from the University of Illinois that helped make him the interviewer he is today.

“I loved [broadcast journalism], but like all college students, there may be times where you’re focused on things that aren’t so academic all the time,” he said. “I remember being unprepared for an interview about boil orders in Champaign, and I felt like I was wasting a person’s time. They didn’t have to take the time for an interview with this kid, but I was a student learning, and he took the time for me. I did not take the time for him, and I did not want to feel that ever again. That’s our responsibility [as interviewers], meet them halfway.”

Evans and his little brother Gavin, along with Schonberger, exhaustively research the interview subjects for “Hot Ones.” Gavin, a freelance writer for Complex, starts with a dossier about the next subject for Sean.

Then, they set out to make each interview the highest quality.

“I really do work hard and obsess over the show,” Evans said. “If I have a waking moment, I’ll spend it making it the best interview possible. I’m trying really hard because it’s a unique opportunity, and I want to make the most of it.”

Evans watched a lot of “Late Night with David Letterman” with his father while growing up. He listened to Howard Stern’s radio show. He draws interviewing ideas from both of them, such as Letterman’s irreverence and Stern’s ability to disarm his subjects.

“He was very much into radio when he was in high school and college,” Mike Evans said. “He just enjoyed the language of things, stringing together words into arguments, little fantasy worlds almost. He would have been happy with a career in radio had that presented itself. But it didn’t quite work out that way and he moved beyond that into a somewhat more modern medium that what he originally planned.”

Bridging the gap

Evans remembers sneakily watching MTV’s “Beavis and Butt-Head” with Gavin at an inappropriate age and his father catching them. However, after hearing a few lines of the sophomoric silliness, Mike caught himself laughing, gave the boys a pass and eventually joined them.

“It was so unimpeachably excellent and funny that my dad allowed it,” Evans said.

Evans thoroughly enjoys when fans approach him and share stories about watching “Hot Ones” with their children.

“I was at a meet-and-greet, and a dad came up with his son and says, ‘He watches the dumbest stuff on YouTube,’ but he showed me ‘Hot Ones,’ and now it’s my favorite show. We watch it together all the time,’ ” Evans said. “It bridges the generational gap. That’s the highest compliment to get because I remember what that was like with my dad allowing us to watch ‘Beavis and Butt-Head.’

“When somebody says ‘Hot Ones’ is the thing that they can bond with their son or daughter over, that is the highest compliment because I remember how important that was for me.”