As her movie Tár expands to theaters nationwide, Cate Blanchett has another masterpiece to unveil: her appearance on Hot Ones, where she tasted a “hot sauce symphony.”
The Academy Award-winning actress visited Sean Evans’ spicy talk show to take part in his wings/hot sauce challenge, and, spoiler alert, she did shockingly well.
“I’m really scared, but I guess it’s the closest I’ll get to knowing what menopause feels like,” Blanchett says at the top of the episode. “Spicy food, I love! But look, I’m sweaty already.” Blanchett sheds her first layer of clothing within minutes, before the first hot wing even touches her tongue.
For those who aren’t familiar, the game of Hot Ones enlists A-listers to eat as many wings as they can with hot sauces of increasing spice levels. They have access to milk and ice water to help them, as they answer Evans’ questions about their personal life and career while choking down flaming-hot fried chicken.
Previous celeb guests include Paul Rudd, Millie Bobby Brown, and Keke Palmer, whose popular appearances have inspired a flurry of sweaty, finger-licking memes with milkshakes and other teary-eyed still images that have been recirculated wider than Renaissance art. Hot Ones has been parodied by SNL and even has its own Netflix spin-off show. Combined with Her Majesty Cate Blanchett, hot off a major TÁR press tour, this specific episode was set up for greatness.
The actress starts off strong, though she’s worried about one aspect of the challenge. “Has anyone ever thrown up?” Blanchett asks. Evans assures her that no one’s puked yet—on the actual set, that is. He asks her if she’s going to barf. “Not yet.”
Then, the pair delve into the state of Blanchett’s career. She’s starring in two big movies this year: Tár, of course, and Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming stop-motion animation adaptation of Pinocchio, in which she voices a monkey. The pair start off by talking about Tár; Blanchett compares the movie to this ongoing “hot sauce symphony” conducted by Evans.
“The weirdest thing is that you prepare in silence. You have the score in front of you, and you imagine the music in your head,” Blanchett says of the film. “That’s your instrument. You hear the sound that you imagined, but when you have an orchestra like that, it was better than I imagined. It was really addictive, actually.”
After Tár, she’s onto talking about her monkey voice. There’s not much to that part of the chat, really—Blanchett simply shrieks, which could just be a reaction to the hot sauce. The most endearing part about Blanchett’s monkey voice, though, is that as she was developing it, she just wanted to make Guillermo del Toro laugh. How charming.
As the heat picks up, so does Blanchett’s sense of humor. She jokes about turmeric being good for her gut as she moves onto the mid-range hot sauces. They chat about Blanchett’s role as Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator, and Blanchett confesses that one of the hardest parts of that role was playing golf.
“I don’t understand leaf blowers and I don’t understand golf,” she says. Sean questions her —leaf blowers??? “Moving leaves over to one place only for them to be blown back again? And then you go, ‘Oh, I’m going to blow them again.’ Gardeners, their faces, they know what they’re doing is stupid.”
Shots have been fired! Leaf blowers of the world, Cate Blanchett is not afraid to fight you.
Too many wings and so much zing from the hot sauces leads to some indigestion, so Blanchett starts burping up a storm. She tries to hide her belches, but she can’t help it. “Sorry, Mum,” Blanchett says. “You should never belch in public.”
Before she makes it to the final round, Blanchett has one final pitch for Evans. They begin chatting about the origin story for her Documentary Now! appearances—she actually pitched the ideas behind her most recent episodes—and the actress offers Evans a role in the show.
“If you ever see a documentary that you think is rife for parody, let us know,” she says. And then, a better idea: “How would we parody [Hot Ones]? Make a documentary about yourself, and I’ll send it to Seth [Meyers], and then I can play you. That’s a meta idea, right?”
A Hot Ones episode of Documentary Now? That’s something we’d all like to see, surely. Instead of hot sauce, they’ll be eating straight viper venom, and instead of personal questions, they’ll have to play Deal or No Deal while they eat. Something like that.
Blanchett makes it to the end of the hot sauce challenge, but she’s nearly sobbing by the end. She hates the final sauce. She can barely get the word Tár out of her mouth—she does manage to say that she and Nina Hoss play “husband and wife” in the film, which is adorable—as the credits roll. But, hey, Cate Blanchett won Hot Ones, and that’s all that matters today.
