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That's my review. That's good. That's hot. Put it on the bottle.
Search this video
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Kristen Bell, yeah, it will. That's good. That's hot. Oh. She's so well-spoken.
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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 Kristen Bell.
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She's one of the most successful actresses in Hollywood with a career in TV and film that includes everything from box office smashes to beloved cult classics.
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Speaking of the former, Frozen 2 hits theaters this November.
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And on the topic of the latter, you can catch new episodes of Veronica Mars streaming on Hulu now.
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Kristen Bell, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me.
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I'm hungry, so I'm happy to be here.
0:43
Well, you know, a few years ago your husband Dax completed one of the most impressive runs that we've ever seen on Hot Ones.
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How much pride does he take in that particular wing-eating exhibition? Too much. Too much.
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He definitely leads certain conversations with, well, you know, I think I'm the reigning champion on Hot Ones.
1:03
Which, look, we eat a lot of hot sauce at home. We like hot stuff.
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So, I think it's either um you could say we're good at it.
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We're, you know, athletes or we've killed our taste buds. Okay. Just eat it. Mhm. That's all you do. Oh, that's beautiful.
1:44
So, while we're sitting here eating vegan wings in Hollywood, I think now's as perfect time as any to unpackage this great Kristen Bell quote. Okay.
1:52
I crave Midwestern food and atmosphere.
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There is no [ __ ] Oh, yeah. Well, there isn't.
1:56
You You just mentioned you're from Chicago, yeah? Yep.
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I mean I'm caught in the middle because I'm also very much susceptible to ordering like anything on a menu that says like the California girl sandwich, the California girl meal.
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I'm like, "That's exactly what I want."
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Cuz I like eating healthy food out here, but there's something about the atmosphere of the Midwest.
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And we just went to Lake Michigan, spent 4th of July there. It just felt like home. I miss it.
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For the uninitiated, can you explain the enduring allure of sliding into a vinyl booth at a Big Boy restaurant in Michigan? Oh, wow. There's nothing like it. It's like Cheers.
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Big Boy's is like Cheers.
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And it sometimes it's out of a time machine.
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But sliding into that booth, knowing you're about to get an unlimited salad bar, and not really caring how many days the lettuce has been in there because you're just there for the blue cheese.
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Everything about it is great.
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And this is made with turmeric. Mhm.
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We're inflaming our taste buds with hot sauce.
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And then the inflammation is coming from the turmeric. It's a full circle. It really is. What a nice sauce. What a thoughtful sauce.
3:07
So, I want to stay on the topic of food because The Good Place is low-key one of the best food shows on television, constantly applying the everything is not as it seems theme to the culinary world.
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Can you give me the BTS behind the clam chowder fountain? Mhm.
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The It is a a writer named Megan Amram.
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She has one of the most interesting brains currently on the planet.
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She kind of has a tick for puns.
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And so, all of the the like Lasagna Come Out Tomorrow, which is the name of the Italian restaurant in The Good Place. Um The Scotty Pippen. Yes, exactly. Yet to Come. Exactly.
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Those are all Megan Amram.
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And she has a thing about She wrote three or four clam chowder jokes into that episode.
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One, I think was that it's just hot milk with dead animal Um there were a bunch of clam chowder jokes and she pitched during her episode that we fill the whole fountain with it and we said it's a good place, why not?
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And then of course what I like about the show is it seems to serve as like a blank canvas for the writers to just express their various culinary gripes.
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Have you ever had a food pet peeve worked into the show and if not, is there one you'd like to share with us?
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One of the most brilliant things I've ever read or been a part of was when um you know, the Good Place is centered around all these yogurt shops and it's because Ted charac- Ted Ted's character says um yogurt frozen yogurt is so uniquely human.
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It's so human to take something great like ice cream and ruin it just a little bit so that you can have a lot more.
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And I do like that it's getting hotter, I got to say. You know what?
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When we went to Rwanda, my husband and I went on a um a trip to Africa and saw a bunch of beautiful countries right before our kids were born.
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It was our last hurrah being autonomous adults.
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And um we had dinner in Rwanda and they have a type of hot sauce there called Akabanga. Do you know it? Not familiar. Going to get you some. School me.
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You have to you buy it I think in like a pharmacy.
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You have to use gloves while you handle it and it comes in like looks like what looks like a medicine bottle and it is like a neon yellow liquid and you could make a vat of soup and put like three drops in it and it is on fire.
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But I I do love that Akabanga sauce.
5:27
So Veronica Mars has taken such an interesting journey through the shifting sands of the entertainment industry starting out on cable and then having this crowd source movie and then being birthed again now on a streaming service.
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Have you ever given any thought to that journey and then the power of a writer die fan base and what that power can mean in 2019?
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The only reason that we are doing more Veronica Mars is because our fans are ride or die and they are so loud and they also are smart, which is flattering that smart people watch the show that you're in.
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Um, we're not mindless entertainment in the background, but um, the the fans have organized themselves.
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I mean, the first year when we were on UPN, they were sending Mars bars into UPN saying save Veronica Mars.
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The second year they were sending dollar bills, which was part of the show that said Veronica Mars is smarter than me.
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The third year they hired a plane to fly above the CW with a banner that said save Veronica Mars.
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I mean, they are organized.
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Although, I will say making the movie because it was crowdfunded, we took a lot of responsibility trying to make the movie what the fans wanted, put in all the Easter eggs.
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Rob Thomas literally wrote a scene where Veronica, who was ostracized in high school, he wrote a scene where she punched out the most popular girl in high school and then he reverse engineered the script.
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Because he was like, "I'm going to give the fans exactly what they want."
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That's what we gave them with the movie because they crowdfunded it.
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With this new series on Hulu, it was a our chance to make Veronica more complex, not necessarily give the fans what they want, but maybe give them what Veronica needs.
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Do you ever feel like a push and pull with that or like a tug of war with that?
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Cuz sometimes I do with Hot Ones.
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The fan base is so cult, but then there's this tight rope walk where you want to be grateful, but not beholden.
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Yeah, and I'm I'm dealing with that right now because there are new there are things that happened in the series, the new one, that some of our die-hard fans were very upset about. They were not happy.
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I almost wish I could talk to each of them at length and say Rob represented a really complex female character.
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She's not just the girl who's making great decisions and the world is happening to her, you know?
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Part of the show is that she doesn't want to get married to this guy who seems perfect for her and I think that's fine.
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I don't think it has to be everyone's happy ending, but that's a complex thing to introduce to people who want Veronica's happiness so much.
7:53
How many wings do you think you've eaten in your life?
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Well, if I'm just doing the math, you know, we're like 170 episodes into this.
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So, if you do that times 10, that already puts me at just 1,700 wings that I've eaten on YouTube for people. Dude.
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Not to say anything No Super Bowl party, no tailgate.
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Like I'm just saying just straight on the clock 1,700 wings. Yeah. still love them?
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If I'm not You know, I'd never order them off a menu, if I'm being real with you, Kristen, you know?
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Like at this point it would feel it would feel like work. Mhm. On some level, you know? Bingo.
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Yeah, I'd never go to a restaurant do a monologue for anyone. I I hear you.
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It's like I'm I'm not working right now.
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the clock over here, you know?
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So, this is the first time in the history of the show that we've ever had the fully formed couple on Hot Ones.
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So, here we want to fact-check Dax's interview with you, Kristen.
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love nothing more than to fact-check my husband. Okay.
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He spoke at length about his man crushes, which included Jay-Z.
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Has he ever embarrassed you at a function or party fanboying out a little too hard? Yes.
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We went to the Met Gala a couple years ago and we were sitting right next to Jay-Z and Beyoncé.
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And when we found this out, we were forget it, we were so excited.
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And I was like, "Oh, this is going to be great.
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Finally, we'll look After tonight, we'll have them in our phones. We'll be best friends."
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And then we maneuvered the table so that Dax could sit right next to Jay-Z.
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And Dax talked his ear off, and I don't think Jay was that interested.
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But I was proud of him that he went for broke. Takes some courage.
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Talk to the person you love.
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I think at one point he also hit him with a lyric, where I was like, "Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh." Mhm. Mhm.
9:37
I think he was like, "Real recognize real."
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And I was like, "Dax, text don't don't.
9:41
Where we at with the Costco obsession?
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Is he still out there bargain hunting? Oh, 100% 100%.
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He actually told a story about Costco last night.
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And he said, "You know someone um I was at the checkout line in Costco and the woman checking me out goes, Oh, I heard you died." And he goes, "Really?"
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And she goes, "Yeah, my daughter told me you died."
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And he goes, "Wow, I mean, well I didn't but how did I die?"
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And she said, "Oh, I didn't ask."
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And then he walked away feeling really low.
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He's like, "Do you know how uninteresting you have to be to not have someone ask how you died?
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Like you hear" He said last night, he's like, "You hear Sean Penn died. First follow up, how?" Right.
10:31
She just read the headline and didn't dig that much deeper. Okay.
10:35
And then finally, we hit him with a math quiz at the end and he nearly aced it but got this one wrong.
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So, I'm going to bounce it off you to see if you can correct the record. All right?
10:41
I'm ordering three hot sauces online.
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Sriracha for $5, Tabasco for $5.
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99, and The Bomb for $7 even. If shipping costs $3.
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50 and there's no tax, what's my total cost on the order? $17. 99 plus $3. 50 is $20 149. Yes. No. Yes. Really? You nailed it. kind of a guess.
11:14
By the way, I'm impressed that you're doing the vegan wings.
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Like I'm very on the, you know, if you can do two days a week vegan or whatever, you know, it's not it's not good for the environment.
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You have all these like farms or whatever.
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You read so much terrible stuff.
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So, I think that, you know, not to have like the wing thing all the time, you know? Yeah. It's nice. You're nice. Thank you, Kristen. I appreciate that. All right, Kristen.
11:36
We have a current 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.
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So, I'll bust out the laptop.
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I'll show you the picture, and then you just tell me the bigger story. Does that sound good? Mhm. All right.
11:50
First things first, can you give us the BTS on the Choco Challenge? Yeah.
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So, the Choco Challenge benefited the Prostate Cancer Foundation.
11:59
My husband's a Prostate Cancer Foundation ambassador.
12:02
He said they sent us some spicy chocolate. We're going to eat it.
12:06
It's sort of like the Ice Bucket Challenge, you know, inspire other people to eat it and then make a funny video.
12:12
It was, without question, the hottest thing I have ever tasted in my life.
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And you guys are hardcore.
12:19
We were so arrogant going into it.
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We're like, this is cute for the Prostate Cancer Foundation.
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We're going to eat this, and it's going to be fun, and I mean, I can't even describe what it was like.
12:29
I will tell you if I had the choice to do that over again or go through labor over again, I'd choose labor. Wow.
12:36
It was unbelievable sensations inside your body.
12:41
And you've eaten like a Carolina Reaper before and stuff, right?
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I've eaten when I had to do the Carolina Reaper Challenge, I ate one, and I felt immediately codependent cuz I didn't think it was that hot, and I like acted it like, "Ooh, good one. It's so hot."
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And then I just kept eating them, and I had like seven of them, and it wasn't um it didn't bother me.
13:02
I really enjoy hot stuff. This was All right.
13:06
So, here you are dressed as Tom Selleck for Halloween.
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This doesn't need any more context. I think you know that.
13:12
And then here you are as Elsa, and you look kind of bummed out.
13:14
Why was Halloween 2017 such an emotional roller coaster for you?
13:20
Well, I had done I had hosted the Jimmy Kimmel show um, he was off, and, um, it was Halloween, and I thought it would be a great costume to dress as Tom Selleck. So, I nailed it.
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And then, on actual Halloween, um, my daughter requested that I go as Elsa with her.
13:44
Not that I come as Anna, the character that I played, um, but that I actually dress like Elsa with her.
13:50
And you can't look at a 4-year-old and say, "No, I'm not going to have a make your Halloween as fun as I could make it."
13:58
But deep down But deep down, it's a little offensive, just because it's like, "Does anybody care about Anna?
14:03
She's the heart and soul of that film." Ooh, that's good. You like that one? Yeah.
14:13
So, The Good Place has received a lot of credit for neatly packaging the tenets of classic moral philosophers like Aristotle into this entertaining TV show.
14:21
Is there a philosophical principle that you've picked up from the show that you find particularly relevant to how you live your life? Yes.
14:31
Um, I have vacillated throughout my life thinking I was utilitarian because I do want greater good.
14:36
They believe that the you have to do something for the greater good, even if it's If I got to push you off the cliff to save everyone in this room, utilitarian would say, "Got to do it."
14:44
Kantian would say, "Do the right thing in the moment," which is even if everyone else has to die, I have to save you.
14:48
I will not push you off the cliff.
14:50
And I find both of those really compelling arguments.
14:52
And moral particularism, which is, uh, a modern-day philosophy introduced by Jonathan Dancy, who is Hugh Dancy's father, the actor.
15:00
Um, he describes moral particularism as the ability to vacillate between either of those two theories.
15:06
And I think that's where I land.
15:09
How would you sort through the ethics of this show?
15:10
Cuz on the one side, we're like, "All right, entertaining concept."
15:15
But there's no getting around the fact that it's sadistic. Yeah, for sure.
15:18
But I would also say you have to have a hook, right?
15:23
There's nothing funny or interesting about perfection.
15:28
You want people to struggle a little bit.
15:30
This is your conflict on this interview show. This is your complexity.
15:35
You have to throw a wrench in the gears in order to make it worth watching.
15:39
Let me hit you with an ethical query cuz I'm just curious how you work through it, okay? Okay. All right.
15:44
So, imagine you're working at a restaurant and you realize that when no one was looking, a deadly chili pepper infected five bowls of chili. Yeah.
15:52
One gluttonous patron has ordered five orders of chili and then five other not so hungry patrons have ordered one bowl each.
16:00
The killer chili is headed towards the five not so hungry customers, but you can step in and divert all the bowls to the one glutton.
16:09
Do you let the five bowls of death chili go out to the not so hungry patrons or do you intervene saving the five lives but killing the glutton?
16:19
So, you can either save the five not so hungry or kill the one glutton.
16:25
You're hitting me with a the trolley problem here.
16:27
It is the trolley problem.
16:28
I got to go I'm going to go I divert the chili.
16:31
Yeah, he's he's he's out.
16:31
I don't have the opportunity to save everyone.
16:35
No, you have to go one or the other. It's that trolley. Hit the switch.
16:43
This says fearless flavor. I agree. Ooh, that's good. That's hot, too. Mhm. That's my review. That's good. That's hot. Put it on the bottle. It'll sell. Yeah, it will. That's good. That's hot. Oh. She's so well spoken.
17:04
How does the pressure of wrapping a film and then waiting for the box office numbers to come in?
17:08
How does that compare to hopping into the late night seat and guest hosting on Jimmy Kimmel Live? Ooh.
17:15
I actually don't ever pay attention to box office numbers.
17:20
I never have for the safety of my brain and my ego. Mhm.
17:26
I want people to go see it.
17:26
Like I want people to love Veronica Mars or The Good Place.
17:30
I want there to be an audience, but I don't necessarily care about the competition of it all and I think it's unhealthy if I'm preoccupied with that versus preoccupied with making the best show possible and exposing it to um a large amount of people.
17:44
Are you preoccupied with the critical reception of it?
17:49
That a little bit more, yeah.
17:49
Because that can actually make or break a movie.
17:55
But this is something I talk to myself in my head all the time about cuz I'm like if you were happy when you watched it and you felt confident, that is the only thing that should matter.
18:05
It is the only thing that should matter.
18:06
It isn't always cuz I'm just a human being, but and jumping into the late night seat was just fun, to be honest.
18:11
Cuz I can read a teleprompter like a [ __ ] okay?
18:16
Cuz the words are right there. That one's [ __ ] hot. Yeah. Mhm.
18:31
Now we're getting into real territory here. Mhm. Yeah.
18:37
So, when you went on Dax's Armchair Expert podcast, he made the point that you're impossible to watch TV shows or movies with.
18:44
This one really got to me, too. Yeah, me too. Let's take my shirt off. Huh.
18:47
Because uh you'll have to constantly mimic the lines. Yeah.
18:52
Where does that impulse come from? I don't know. It's a tick.
18:53
It's like a I can't explain it.
19:01
When I hear something that sounds funny in my ear, which unfortunately is usually other people's accents, I have to say I have to say it.
19:10
So, it makes it miserable to watch like Game of Thrones or Peaky Blinders next to me because I'm just like talking into my hand.
19:18
Doing a voice in Assassin's Creed, did you get a newfound respect for the narrative storytelling in video games these days?
19:27
Yes, but I mostly just had fun with that because I don't know that at the time when I did it cuz that was like 15 years ago.
19:34
I wasn't necessarily tracking the narrative as much as I should have been.
19:38
I was just like, "Oh, [ __ ] cool.
19:38
I'm in the Assassin's Creed video game."
19:43
The other thing that stuck is almost every Disney movie I've ever seen I could do from start to finish with all the voices.
19:49
And I do the voices when I read um them to my kids like the books and they hate it.
19:55
They're like, "Stop doing Scuttle's voice.
19:57
Just do a regular voice."
19:57
I'm like, "But he's Scuttle the seagull." And they don't like it. They don't like it.
20:05
Kristen, you ready to move on? [ __ ] I think so. Am I allowed to swear? Yeah. Okay.
20:10
So, this one's the chocolate plague from PuckerButt Pepper Company. PuckerButt? Mhm.
20:28
This has more of a flavor than the last one, for sure.
20:32
Because this was more of a burn. Mhm.
20:34
And this has more of a flavor and I like that. Okay. Well, I dig it.
20:38
It absolutely has zero nutritional value, you guys.
20:42
Literally, vitamin A, zero. C, zero. Calcium, zero. Iron, zero. Total carbohydrate, . 3 g.
20:53
So, we wouldn't be doing this episode justice if we didn't dive into some of the off-piece obsessions of Kristen Bell.
20:58
And I know that your idea of a Golden Globes after-party is playing that Settlers of Catan at home in your pajamas.
21:05
And that can be kind of a rift-causing game.
21:06
Have you ever been forced to tears or into a violent rage playing that board game? 100% 100 P. Yes. We play together. We almost always fight.
21:16
And we have had to create a code word to make sure that we don't go to bed angry. And it's Anaconda.
21:24
And when we see a fight brewing, we have to all go Anaconda, it's only a game.
21:29
So that we actually have to put a little bit of our physical body into it.
21:36
Get us out of our fighting heads.
21:38
You're a self-described Skee-Ball freak.
21:39
Do you have any pro tips? Not a freak.
21:41
I'm just an excellent athlete.
21:46
Always go for the hundreds.
21:48
Don't waste your time with the 40s and whatever.
21:50
useless child's play You got to go for the hundreds or the 50s.
21:56
It's the only way to play Skee-Ball.
21:57
And now that you're a Game of Thrones super fan, do you have a hot take on the last season? Oh, man.
22:04
Look, I don't want to sling any [ __ ] You're a beast. You're doing that. You're a beast.
22:09
Are you trying to bait me to do it? You love this stuff. That's a funny lead. That's a funny lead.
22:15
Well, it's tradition around here to put a little extra on that one? On the last one. Always? Did my husband do it?
22:23
You know what your husband did actually? What?
22:24
He not only did that, he called in for another wing to do it again. he did.
22:27
You're a piece of [ __ ] Um Game of Thrones I will say I thought the Jon and Khaleesi thing could have been a lot messier.
22:38
This was an opinion given to me by Josh Lawson who I was on House of Lies with.
22:42
And when he was explaining this to me, cuz I was like desperate to give that writer's room some respect. I was like, "Come on!
22:47
They can't please everyone."
22:50
Right, and you're close to it.
22:50
You've experienced sort of the same thing. "It's It was great. They tried. It was wonderful.
22:54
You know, this was their story.
22:55
It's not my job to judge."
22:58
And then Josh Lawson was like, "Yeah, but didn't you want to see more?
23:01
Didn't you want to see her stumble back?
23:02
Didn't you want to see him fight?
23:02
Didn't you want to see her scream at him?
23:05
Didn't you want to see him then like just go for her?
23:06
And I was like, yeah, I did.
23:08
I wanted it to be messy like Ned Stark. It's a thick boy. Woo, okay. All right. Here we go. Here we go. Cheers. Cheers. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
23:36
All right, Kristen Bell, here we are at the summit of spice mountain and we've covered a lot of terrain today, but one glaring blind spot is your love of sloths and humbly, I would say that you have a lot to do with this sloth revolution.
23:49
You know, I think at one point, the sloth it was a sleepy afterthought, but now you see the sloth on like Urban Outfitters socks and Papyrus greeting cards.
23:58
So, now that we've eaten 10 scorched nut chicken wings, I have to ask in as much detail as possible, why do sloths have such a special place in your heart?
24:09
They speak to me because they really are just a a junk drawer of an animal.
24:11
They are um they're like a a a pig meets a monkey but with the reflexes of your grandmother.
24:20
And how are any of those things bad?
24:22
Like those things are greater than the sum of their parts, right? Right.
24:27
Um I also think I'm a pretty fast-paced person.
24:30
I talk fast, I do things fast, and they just remind me to slow down. That's why I love them. Well, there you have it.
24:37
Kristen Bell's love of sloths and look at you taking You don't have to do it. I don't have to do it. No, you don't. I'm wired that way. Okay.
24:50
Taking the vegan wings down to the stick and now before I choke on it, there's nothing left to do but walk the red carpet for you, Kristen Bell.
24:56
This camera, this camera, this camera.
24:58
Let the people know what you have going on in your life. Wait, what?
25:03
If you have any projects to Oh, oh.
25:06
Um, my first project is my nose.
25:09
Dripping right now um because of the hot sauce.
25:12
Um, uh, The Good Place will be starting September 26th, I believe, on NBC. It's our last season.
25:18
Um, I'm really proud of it.
25:20
The finale will be well worth the wait.
25:21
Veronica Mars is streaming on Hulu now. It's a new season.
25:25
It is uh an older, more complex Veronica and Frozen will be out November 20-something this year. FROZEN 2. GOOD JOB. YOU KILLED THAT. I KNEW YOU WOULD.
25:47
WE HAVE HOT sauces at home that are just called like, "Fuck you."
25:48
Literally, like the bottles are like That's what I think is funny about hot sauce.
25:53
It's like, "The blood of Satan." Yes. Wait, what do we do?
25:56
We just drink and we go, "Ooh, ooh." Mhm.
26:01
Hey, what's going on, Hot Ones fans?
26:03
This is Sean Evans checking in to say thank you so much for watching today's episode.
26:06
And if you were ever on the fence about the subscription box, this month is the month.
26:11
You will get the Hot Ones trio pack including the sold out Carolina Reaper edition Last Dab. That's right.
26:18
The only way to get the Carolina Reaper edition Last Dab is in the subscription box.
26:21
And the only way to get the subscription box is through Heat N HeatNess. com HeatNess. com to order.
26:25
Be careful out there, dab heads. And godspeed.