Why Steve Buscemi refuses to appear on “Hot Ones”: ‘I don’t care how much you paid me’

Derek LawrenceMon, November 9, 2026 at 7:04 PM UTC

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Steve Buscemi; Sean Evans on ‘Hot Ones’Credit: Vivien Killilea/Getty; First We Feast/YouTubeKey Points -

Steve Buscemi says he’ll never go on Hot Ones.

The Wild Horse Nine actor can’t believe his costars recently participated in the show, which combines questions and hot wings.

Buscemi doesn’t understand why people like spicy food.

Steve Buscemi has a spicy take: You couldn’t pay him enough to go on Hot Ones.

The beloved actor was initially stumped when asked on a podcast recently what food confuses him, but he eventually came up with a passionate response that included him vowing to never appear on the popular online talk show Hot Ones, on which celebrities chat over increasingly fiery wings.

“I’m confused why people like spicy food, why they like their mouths hot,” Buscemi said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “Sam Rockwell told me that he and Parker Posey did Hot Ones — that’s something I would never do. I don’t care how much you paid me, how much they said, ‘But it would really support the film,’ no. It not only makes me confused, it makes me angry.”

Steve Buscemi in ‘Wild Horse Nine’Credit: Diego Araya Corvalán/Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures

He concluded his hilarious, good-natured rant by declaring, “You’ll never get me, Hot Ones!’

Hosted by Sean Evans, Hot Ones launched in 2015 and has become a true internet phenomenon in the years since. Thanks to Evans’ strong interview skills and A-listers struggling to eat the hot wings, clips from the show are constantly going viral, turning Hot Ones into a must-stop on many publicity tours.

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Buscemi’s Wild Horse Nine costars Rockwell and Posey were participants in the most recent episode of the spinoff Hot Ones Versus, with the onscreen married couple grilling each other, playing charades, and arm wrestling.

Ironically, Buscemi can famously handle some heat. He was a New York City firefighter before his acting career took off, and he returned to the job as a volunteer in the aftermath of 9/11. Buscemi finally got to star as a firefighter in the 2020 movie The King of Staten Island.

“One of the things I appreciated that you guys did was you paid as much attention to what the life was like in the firehouse as to going to a fire,” he told Judd Apatow and Pete Davidson as part of EW’s Around the Table video series. “It’s hard to get that right, and I think you guys did it. Firefighters are really funny and they can be brutal with each other and I think that’s captured really well in the film. And so I felt very comfortable.”

He continued, “The hardest thing for me is I’m so out of practice, not being around a firehouse, and then to have comedians playing firefighters and [Apatow] would have us improvise and I wouldn’t know what to say, like I couldn’t keep up and you’d have to throw me a line or Pete would pull me aside and tell me what to say.”

Watch Buscemi on Happy Sad Confused above.

on Entertainment Weekly

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