Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | June 30, 2023
Jennifer Lawrence is back in the spotlight to promote her latest movie, No Hard Feelings. This is her most mainstream film in a few years, a big raunchy comedy and star vehicle for a major actress. That means she’s on the promotional trail. She’s making the expected stops, dropping by Watch What Happens Live to talk about her favourite Bravo shows and answering cute questions with Vanity Fair. She’s also turned up on two more eagerly awaited shows, both of which have become minor celebrity phenomena and crucial parts of any promotional tour. Coincidentally, both revolve around chicken.
Hot Ones and the Chicken Shop Date make for two of the most anticipated aspects of any publicity tour, particularly for online audiences. Both shows revolve around a celebrity interview where chicken (or vegan variant) is consumed and questions are asked by the host. It’s simple enough, but in execution, both series offer a refreshing spin on familiar territory, bringing depth and relatability to the well-worn celebrity profile.
It used to be the Big Deal to go on The Tonight Show, but talk-show interviews seem far less important to the cycle. We’re in the age of the viral moment and everyone is hunting for that fad that will force them in front of as many eyeballs as possible. Jimmy Fallon and Ellen DeGeneres used to be very good at this, having guests play games and do skits that prized a shambolic brand of relatability over anything more insightful. Buzzfeed, at its prime, excelled in this realm by having the rich and famous cuddle puppies, read horny fan tweets, and play one of their many quizzes. Neither of these options made for much of an interview, with all the questions being softballs that publicist-approved shallowness. The point is to sell yourself as the best version of that celebrity.
By contrast, Hot Ones is both deeper and messier than your average Kimmel interview. The set-up is an obvious gimmick — make celebrities eat chicken wings of increasing levels of hotness and see how they try to survive the pain — but it’s what is built on top of those foundations that make it special. Sean Evans, the host, actually knows how to conduct an interview. His questions are well-researched and cover a wide variety of topics. It’s not unusual for guests to be amazed by the depth of his queries. It’s all delivered with such casualness too, not a drop of cynicism or cheese. You actually learn something from these interviews rather than hearing the same four anecdotes over and over.
The hook is obviously hilarious too. It’s fun to watch people suffer, to see anyone, much less an A-Lister, get cocky about a hot sauce’s potency then scramble for milk as they realize their mistakes. It certainly allows a level of candour from panicked guests who forget their verbal filters once Da Bomb hits. If Jimmy Fallon’s kids’ birthday party games aim for relatability, Hot Ones gets a bullseye every time. What’s more familiar than being in pain over a spicy wing? It comes for us all, even those of us who love the agony (my cockiest quality as a human being is a strident belief that I could get through at least 80% of the Hot Ones line-up without cracking.)
Chicken Shop Date is more of a performance by comparison. Host Amelia Dimoldenberg, perhaps the best-named person working in media today, is taking the piss out of the concept as much as she’s executing it. Evans aims for casual realness while Dimoldenberg plays up the discomfort of the conceit. The word ‘date’ is in the show’s title, after all. If you’ve ever watched a cringey celebrity interview then the chances are high you’ve seen a host try to hit on their subject. It’s creepily common for some weird dude to perv over the actress or singer on their couch and it never stops being unbearable for everyone involved. Chicken Shop Date is parodying that, driving home the weirdness of its set-up while letting the subject be in on the joke. Sometimes, they perform admirably, as Daniel Kaluuya did when facing up against Dimoldenberg’s brand of brazen awkwardness. Smartly, Chicken Shop Date is also a quick show, with around 40 minutes of chat condensed to less than ten minutes for a snappy, easily digestible viewing experience. It’s more akin to, say, Between Two Ferns or The Eric Andre Show than Jimmys Fallon or Kimmel.
If Hot Ones has Evans take a backseat to the drama, Chicken Shop Date is Dimoldenberg’s spotlight moment. She’s the one driving the conversation and the tone, flitting between earnest and ironic to match the subject’s mood (some guests seem to get the joke more than others.) She’s not interested in your workout regime or whether you liked working with your co-star. Rather, she asks the unexpected, and you can tell her guests are surprised to be asked something unfamiliar.
Just by flipping the default gender dynamic of the majority of talk-shows — old guy in suit leers over young woman who doesn’t want to be there — there’s a lot of drama to be mined. Take the Matty Healy episode, for instance (yeah, I know.) It takes him a moment to get the concept, but then he’s committed to the fake date with Dimoldenberg. It’s a back-and-forth of control, cheeky but still with interesting low stakes. Of course, it’s Dimoldenberg who ends up on top, as always. The fantasy is palpable: wouldn’t you love to have your favourite celebrities work so hard to flirt with you?
Hot Ones and Chicken Shop Date alike require a greater kind of commitment from their subject than what most of the current promotional cycle model requires. The reason publicists loved stuff like Buzzfeed puppy interviews or Fallon’s schtick is because it rejected probing questioning in favour of fizzy joy. Ideally, you want to be able to sell yourself and your project without giving away too much of your personal life, and that’s certainly more so the case now than ever. But what that’s meant is the sacrifice of any real kind of substance. I don’t mean that we need every celebrity to spill the beans on their psychological state, but I do miss seeing them truly engage with an interview. I want to hear them really discuss their work, the industry they inhabit, and how they engage with the surrealness of fame. Sean Evans is great at getting celebrities to converse on such subjects because he actually cares about the questions. By contrast, Amelia Dimoldenberg gives celebrities that opportunity to f**k around with the boring expectations of the talk-show format and let their true personalities shine. It’s not ‘real’, per se, but it is far more sincere.
The constant demand for relatability from our celebrities is an unbearable trap defined by unrealistic standards and the constant moving of the goalposts in terms of what we want from such people. Still, we do like to see our favourites be more than PR mouthpieces with little to do beyond smile and laugh and plug their projects. Perhaps a good meal is all they needed to open up in an intriguing manner. Actually, both Chicken Shop Date and Hot Ones prove that you need to do more than what’s expected of you. But the food certainly helps!
