Conan O’Brien’s Friends Were Worried That He Might Have Died After Filming His ‘Hot Ones’ Episode

Conan O’Brien suffers for his art, and boy was he suffering after filming Hot Ones.

On his Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast, Conan talked about his viral episode of Hot Ones, in which he guzzled hot sauce and rubbed it on his face and body (“I’ve never felt so alive! I’m erect for the first time in 15 years!”).

“The immediate response to being on was, I think my eyes were incredibly runny and my mouth really hurt,” he said. “The thing that was most interesting is that my wedding ring, some sauce, because I was rubbing my hands around in the sauce… some of the sauce got underneath my wedding ring.”

On the drive home, Conan — who earlier in the podcast discussed using his post-Hot Ones poop as welding material, in case that’s of interest to you — noticed his wedding ring was burning. “It hasn’t burned like that since they put it on me at the altar, he joked (no late-night host could resist that setup).

Once the Hot Ones episode was released, Conan started trending on social media, with people sharing their favorite Late Night, Tonight Show, and Conan clips. But some of his friends reached out to him because they thought he had died. Nope, not dead. In fact, he’s the “Tom Cruise of comedy,” according to co-host Matt Gourley.

You can watch Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend above.