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My kid's giggling at me.
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You got the family standing by? My kid is Go away, son. I hate you.
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Hey, what's going on, everybody?
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From First We Feast, I'm Sean Evans, and you're watching Hot Ones.
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It's the show with hot questions and even hotter wings.
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And today, we're joined by Jeffrey Dean Morgan.
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He's played unforgettable roles in TV and film, perhaps most notably as Negan on The Walking Dead.
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Big character reveal, April 4th.
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He also has a new film as well.
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It's called The Unholy, a horror movie set to release on April 2nd.
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Jeffrey Dean Morgan, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Sean.
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Pleasure to be here, my friend.
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How are you feeling going into this?
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Like, are you a guy who enjoys spicy food? I feel pretty good.
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I felt really good before uh today came. You know what I mean?
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Like, watching your show, I've always felt like I could do it.
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And now that I'm looking at these wings in front of me, I suddenly am I I feel like I might throw up a little bit. The classic. I'm ready. Feel you. All right.
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I like starting that one. That was nice.
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That's a good like uh getting into the kiddie side of the pool. I like it.
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So, your survival skills really transcend your acting work as evidenced by you and your family living on this 100-plus acre farm in upstate New York, where you take care of an array of animals that include Highland cows, alpacas, and emus.
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Over the past year, there's been a massive migration of New Yorkers to the Hudson River Valley.
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What's the easiest way to spot a city slicker who maybe bought a pandemic farmstead but didn't really think it through.
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Yeah, they drive a Subaru. I don't know why.
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I don't know I think they're like four-wheel drive.
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Uh the family will go nice in it, but they drive a Subaru.
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So, I see a Subaru and I am immediately like flipping them off.
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In the ongoing battle to keep your livestock safe, what has been the animal adversary for you that's been most formidable?
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Because between the coyotes, the crows, the bobcats, it sounds like you really have your hands full. Uh it's a bobcat.
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Uh story when we first got the farm, my alpaca were getting attacked by a bobcat and uh it was the middle of a horrible winter and we had like 6 ft of snow and I built an igloo on top of the barn using hay bales and slept out there all night with a rifle trying to get this bobcat.
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And I didn't, by the way.
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The bobcat won and it's still out there. I see his tracks.
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We can follow his tracks through the snow.
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So, his days are numbered. Someday, someday.
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Which is the more ideal day in Rhinebeck?
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Is it the Santa Claus parade in the winter or spending a day at the old Rhinebeck Aerodrome in the summer?
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Uh those are both pretty great.
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I'm going to have to go with the Santa Claus parade cuz it only happens once a year.
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You can visit the Aerodrome a couple times.
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Um but Santa Claus is has a very special place in in our family's heart for sure and um when we first got to Rhinebeck and that wasn't that long ago.
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It was like 10 years ago.
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Maybe 3 to 500 people and I think last year they had 37,000 people.
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I would love to have you come one time cuz you know, we've been in the parade a couple times, too.
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So, I I I can pull some strings for you.
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And then we got the candy store, so I'll hook you up with some hot chocolate, buddy.
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Get me on the float, get me that peppermint bark, I am right there. I am right there. Do it.
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I was wondering where you came up with the Rhinebeck.
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I mean, I know you're good and you do your research, but that's pretty good.
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Now, you got the wizard Rhinebeck.
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That's pretty [ __ ] great. Oh yeah, okay.
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So for many people watching today, you're known as the bat-wielding cold-blooded killer Negan from The Walking Dead, a character that was once described by executive producer David Alpert as one of the greatest villains ever created for TV.
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Not to destroy the show's mystique or anything, but can you give us a Hollywood special effects trade secret when it comes to the art of a zombie massacre? Um a trade secret?
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Well, we have the best in the world with uh special effects makeup with Greg Nicotero.
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Um not only does he come up with the the zombie innovations, and every week there's a a zombie that is specialized in it's unbelievable, we've never seen it before.
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You'd be amazed how little we actually touch the zombies when we're killing them.
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I'll give you a little secret.
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I went out of frame out of the camera frame today with the crowbar after it looked like I whacked a zombie and dipped the into the crowbar into a bucket of pig guts, come up with it, and it looks like I had just wiped out the zombie, you know.
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Um That's what I'm talking about.
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of little things like that, but really I think the big secret we have is Greg Nicotero.
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He's a genius when it comes to that. All right, let's do it.
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This one looks delicious. Yeah, yeah. Oh.
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Oh, this one is I'm starting to feel a little bit of um I'm going to sneak up on you.
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It's a yeah, a little bit of a step up from those first two, for sure. All the same. Not bad.
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So I have to applaud you for being able to parlay your lifelong obsession with graphic novels into a formidable acting resume that includes not only The Walking Dead, but also The Losers, Supernatural, as well as playing Thomas Wayne.
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I know that you have a background in graphic design.
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Is there a comic that stands out to you from a purely just artistic appeal perspective?
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This is probably going to be an obvious answer for for people that know me, but probably Watchmen.
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Um for a lot of reasons, but I think um Alan Moore uh uh who who wrote that.
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Dave Gibbons who drew Watchmen.
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I think the two of them together was unlike anything else.
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I think that book really kind of pulled you in.
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When Watchmen got in my hands, that to me was sort of the life changer.
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What do you find interesting about dark superheroes?
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Because between your character the comedian in Watchmen, your love for the show The Boys, it does seem like you're drawn to these characters that have a capacity for evil.
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I heard my wife say this the other day.
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I don't even know who she was talking to.
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She wasn't even talking to me.
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And it was she wasn't talking about anything that I've ever done.
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But she said something to the effect that a villain doesn't know he's a villain.
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Even though there are some like very nihilistic qualities to someone like the comedian and and Negan as well, what would happen to a normal man who is thrown into an extraordinary circumstance.
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They are the heroes of their story.
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I think that a good villain has no idea that he's a villain.
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Although he may the only the only hiccup in that is they may enjoy doing the bad stuff a little bit more than they ought to. Hellfire, devil's blend.
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I mean there's a couple things in there that would give a fellow pause.
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All right, I got a question.
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Um Not that you have to It's not my job to ask questions, I guess, but What did Gordon Ramsay have on his show?
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He had like a grocery store underneath that thing.
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Yeah, so we we shot that at uh we shot that in West Hollywood.
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I think that he must have stopped by Vons on the way there and then just packed it up cuz he had Pepto-Bismol, lemon and lime juice, busting out the donut and and there was more in that bag that will forever remain a mystery.
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I I have never seen anything like it.
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I mean, it seems to me there has to be a and we'll see how I do here, but there's got to be a sense of honor to this. Right?
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And even if No performance enhancers.
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No performance enhancers.
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It's got to be like, you know, there's got to be something.
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And I'm I know I'm going to be in tears cuz I can already start to feel now my lips are starting I'm starting to feel my lips a little bit on my face.
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Um but it's got to be I'm going to try to do it with honor.
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I want you to know that god damn it, I'm going to try to do it with honor.
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There's an episode recently where someone asked you, I don't remember who, but uh Oh, no, it was it was Will Ferrell.
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And and he was like, "How are you doing this?"
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And he you likened yourself to a a sherpa or something.
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It was a great analogy that I loved.
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And you were like, "Well, look, if you were with a real sherpa climbing up Everest and they panicked, uh that wouldn't help you very much, now would it?"
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And so, you're there to Are you eating five?
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Did you just dig into five?
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I Yeah, I did work ahead. I think you know what?
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I think you you mesmerized me with with the with the flattering words.
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I lost I lost where I was. That's the one. That's the one. Right. All right, I'm going in.
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I don't want to get totally behind.
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We had so much fun as Santa Claus.
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The bad thing about that one was that I bit my tongue when I was telling the joke hard and I'm feeling hot sauce in the my tongue where I bit it. Uh-oh. You got an open wound. Yeah, open wound.
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All right, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, we have a recurring segment on our show called Explain That Gram where we do a deep dive on our guest's Instagram, pull interesting pictures that need more context, and with you, we have a theme.
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It's all with your buddy Norman Reedus.
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So, I'll show you the picture, you just tell us the bigger story.
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Where did your love affair with the motorcycle begin, and do you guys have a most memorable road trip together?
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Spain was maybe the greatest trip we've ever had.
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Once a year, we like to try to hit the road and do like a real trip, but it is hard with our work schedules.
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So, like in Nashville, like in New Orleans, Florida, something like that.
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A A A good 2-3 dayer that we can kind of get our feet up and go.
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Um but I've been riding bikes since I was a kid, and and Norman as well.
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Funny enough, Norman and I have known each other for 30 years.
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We had the same acting manager 30 years ago, no joke.
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And then I kind of lost touch with him, and so when I got on the show, it was sort of like, "Ah, it's so good to see you."
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And I knew that he rode, he knows that I ride, and and it was just immediate.
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And then we've been kind of just inseparable since, and we can just go for miles and have the best conversation without ever opening our mouths.
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Stonehenge, overrated or underrated?
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We've heard mixed reviews on this show.
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I'm going to go with overrated. Yeah.
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You want me to tell you why it's overrated?
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Becau- it's because there's like a major highway that passes right next to it.
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Like not like a mile or a half mile, it's like you could throw a rock at it.
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So, it's not that zen kind of space that you want it to be.
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It is very special, though. It's pretty amazing.
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That one's hot on the lips. All right. I'm in.
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I'm in, but I'm feeling um I suppose it's good that I can still feel my lips.
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So, I I when they're numb is maybe when I should be fearful. Oh, Tears of the Sun. That's very helpful.
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I'm I'm just sensing a a sense a cry baby Johnny Depp here. Right now from the sun.
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How do you find out that your character is dying?
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Like do you literally read it in the script and then have to grapple with both the story driven emotions of all that as well as your own employment or do they give you a heads up?
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Yeah, oh yeah, cuz I died a lot. No, you're right.
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Oh man, that was like running joke with my father, it still is.
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He's like, "You died, you know, 127 times." He knows.
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Um when you used to audition, you generally knew your character was going to die, you know.
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There was probably a dying scene that you had to do in a room without an actor with a casting director that wasn't going to give you anything and I was probably just dying my ass off a million times.
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I, you know, whether it's taking gunshots or whatever.
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I would do anything to get the job and and they would put you through your paces back then, too, man.
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Mortifying [ __ ] Grey's Anatomy I knew was something special.
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That's the one time that I saw my death coming and was trying everything I could do to get out of that death.
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That character, Denny, in that love story with Izzie kind of took the world by storm.
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I knew how [ __ ] lucky I was to be there and I was like, "Please don't kill me.
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I will do Shonda, Shonda, please don't kill me. Please and I did. I I did. I begged her.
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And that was That's what changed my life.
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That's being Denny where I never got out of bed is why Zack Snyder hired me to be the comedian.
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So, that's that's how special that was.
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I could tell that was a bad bite right off the bat.
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It felt like a lot of liquid.
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I just think I got a big puddle of sauce and it went right to the cut on my tongue.
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I'm already worried about the next one.
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I'm already worried about the next one. That's the bomb, man. I know.
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Oh, [ __ ] Yeah, this This just changed for me. Yeah. This has been great.
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Like, I'm thinking Santa Claus and Comic-Con and now you're not invited, maybe.
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Like, I could What's the story behind getting matching tattoos with your Supernatural costars, Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles?
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Cuz it's not often that you'll see costars sort of immortalize their time together that permanently. We did that. Hold on. My mouth is burning up.
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Uh we did that at my wedding.
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I'm going to have to have my first sip of water.
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I was trying to [ __ ] so good. Yeah.
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That uh Whatever that was one. Okay.
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So, uh we got married, my wife and I.
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We had a tattoo artist come to our wedding.
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And that show, I think, lasted a million years and we just had a very special relationship, the three of us.
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It was just one of those things, so we got a very small little crown on our on our uh wrist.
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I was trying to What body part is that?
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I give My mind is starting to melt.
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I'm trying to hold it together here, though.
14:53
You once described your 2003 role as a Zindy reptilian in Star Trek Enterprise as a quote job that made you want to quit acting. Can you expand on that? On the nose. It's on the nose.
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That That quote is on the nose.
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That feeling was on the nose.
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Um that job was on the nose uh in a bad way.
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It turned out that I'm claustrophobic.
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I did I had a really hard time doing the makeup process and I had straws in my nose and I've never been on a set where I went home at night and just thought that what am I doing?
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This is I've made the worst [ __ ] decision of my life.
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I don't ever want to be an actor again.
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Like I was sure that this was just wrong and it almost made me quit. It was it was horrible.
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Okay, I don't know why I'm so Okay.
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I'm trying a lot let it touch. Oh, I already touched.
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Yeah, that doesn't even taste like a [ __ ] sauce.
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That's not like let's make something delicious. Careful. Careful around the eyes.
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I was going forearm eyes. Um Ow.
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See, why do people eat that?
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That's my That's my question.
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So I think maybe for some people it's like a macho thing.
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Uh for us it's just for this kind of moment. That's not enjoyable. Holy [ __ ] Oh my god.
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So you've amassed a small fleet of motorcycles and covered pavement in every state including some countries.
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And I know that you have a Mustang nicknamed Lucille that even has The Walking Dead bat on the trunk.
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Of all the toys in your garage, which one has your favorite custom finish? Oh my god. Probably Lucille. Probably.
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Oh my god, I can't feel my face.
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Yeah, it's uh Oh my god, that hurts so bad. I went crazy. I thought I was good.
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And my son I'm flipping him off.
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He's taking pictures of me.
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Route 66 was the year I was born for one. I found this Mustang.
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I wanted to redo it and I did.
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It's about Oh my god, it's so hot.
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The car is hot and my face.
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It's a about 700 horsepower. Um on a very light car. Oh my god, dude. Sean, I lost it. I'm trying to focus. You know what? We're still connected.
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We're We're still connected.
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I'm still I'm right along with you.
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I'm right along with you. Okay. Woo!
18:00
I know with your first big paycheck from acting that you bought a Harley Davidson.
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What separates Harley Davidson guys from like sport bike guys?
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Well, I'm going to say balls. Um manly.
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You're a real man with a Harley and you're just [ __ ] joking if you're not.
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Um there is something about a Harley Davidson that nobody can compare to.
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My first bike was a a Night Rod, a blacked-out Night Rod Special.
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Um it looks like the Batman motorcycle.
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And um when I could buy a new Harley Davidson for me, that was the day that I was a success to me. You know what I mean?
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It wasn't buying a house. It wasn't uh anything.
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It was buying a motorcycle and uh I love riding them.
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There's nothing I've found that is comparable to a Harley Davidson on an open road. Uh the bomb.
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Uh that's going to go somewhere special.
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And so this has the one-eyed scorpion. I like it. All right, man. You see how red this is?
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You see the tint of that? Compared to number one?
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I know I I It's I know it all too well.
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I want to say this doesn't taste like the poison that the bomb did right off the bat. Still tough. Still tough.
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Why would I say anything?
19:31
We've talked to a bunch of Hot Ones guests in the past about what it was like to grow up in New York during hip-hop's heyday, but I don't know if I've ever talked to anybody who was in the Pacific Northwest, boots on the ground for the explosion of grunge rock in the '90s.
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How do you remember the Seattle scene taking shape at that time? Oh my god.
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Oh my god, what is that my face?
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I'm trying so hard to just keep it together here.
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So, none of us knew, obviously, that that time in Seattle was going to be the birth of a movement.
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I mean, I don't even know what you what you call grunge rock.
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It it changed the face of music.
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I think that the guys who that were making that music, Nirvana, Soundgarden, were just real artists, and it is now something that we will tell our kids about because that was a special time, and it was true art.
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And if it hadn't been for for that and it hadn't been for the people that I was hanging out with, there's no way I would have gotten into acting.
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I would have never had the balls to go into the business that I got into.
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I wasn't good enough to be in their band, so, you know, look, I'll do record covers or whatever, posters for their rock shows, and then it was like, well, uh poetry, and then that became [ __ ] acting.
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Um but it was it was all pulled from the creative nucleus that was that Seattle music scene, and that's how certainly my career was kind of birthed. All right.
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Oh, [ __ ] I'm going to shake it up. Got to shake it up.
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I'm going to shake it up. Here goes the shake.
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I got talking with that last dab. All right. Cheers, my brother. Cheers. Mouth to mouth. Yeah.
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I think I did a little too much on the dab.
21:41
Well, the good news is, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, that we've reached the final stop aboard the Scoville Express.
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Along the way, we've talked about your many highlights in acting.
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We've talked about Mischief Farm.
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We've talked about how we're going to hang out at Santa Claus this winter.
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But, before you go, I want to take a little wink at your new film, The Unholy, with a little bit of a hot sauce tie-in.
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Over the course of this 10-wing gauntlet, we've experienced everything from heavenly flavors to ungodly spice levels.
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But, through some divine miracle, somehow, some way, we've made it to the end.
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Which sauce in this lineup would you describe as the most evil?
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Oh, not even a [ __ ] question.
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It's the Zachary, the one that I knew was going to be going in.
22:27
Not even It's not even close.
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This has a taste immediately when it hits your mouth that it says, "I am poison and will take you down."
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Which hot sauce label would you describe as the most depraved? One eyed scorpion. My lips are [ __ ] up.
22:44
On a lighter note, is there a sauce that you would call angelic? This one.
22:51
It had kind of the most flavors and I For me, it had like a hint of lime and my lips are on fire.
22:58
An angel in a bottle, and look at you, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, taking on the wings of death and living to tell the tale.
23:05
And now, my friend, there's nothing left to do but roll out the red carpet for you.
23:08
This camera, that camera, probably just the one you're looking at.
23:10
Let the people know what you have going on in your life.
23:15
You got here's Negan on uh Sunday the Easter Sunday, whatever that is.
23:20
Yeah, Sunday the 4th, is that right?
23:23
And then uh that same weekend on Good Friday is uh Unholy the Movie, um which doesn't even compare to the bomb and the last dab as far as fear. Great job. Great job.
23:40
There was a minute there I was like, "I'm going to have to duck out just for a second to go throw up." And I said that before. I've seen that before.
23:49
Oh, dude, I had I had so much fun. It was great.
23:52
Thank you so much for having me. Woo!
24:03
Hot Ones Truth or Dab the Game.
24:03
The kit comes complete with 250 question cards.
24:09
And then here's how the game works.
24:09
You just go around the table, you take turns being the host, being the players.
24:13
And when you're a player and you get asked a question, you have a choice.
24:16
Just like in the show, answer it honestly or suffer the wrath of the last dab. And take a look at this.
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There's even a mini bottle of the last dab included.
24:24
I suggest you have napkins on hand.
24:26
You have to have some milk on hand.
24:28
And of course, be careful.
24:30
Be very careful around the eyes.
24:33
Hot Ones Truth or Dab the Play at Home Game is available at shop. firstwefeast. com, heatness. com, and Amazon. Play at your own risk. Wings not included.