‘It just got hot.’ See SLO County native Zac Efron eat chicken wings — and shed a few tears
San Luis Obispo County native Zac Efron opens up about his past — and sheds a few tears in his latest on-screen appearance.
The “Greatest Showman” actor recently appeared on the popular YouTube TV show “Hot Ones.”
On “Hot Ones,” host Sean Evans interviews his celebrity guests while they attempt to eat rounds of chicken wings coated in spicy sauce. As Evans explains in his introduction, “It’s the show with hot questions and even hotter wings.”
On the April 2 episode, Efron fields questions about food, fitness, his baseball collection and his love of the outdoors — as well as chance encounters with DJ Martin Garrix and movie stars Jim Carrey, Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Cruise — as he eats.
“It just got hot,” Efron, 32, acknowledges at one point.
Efron also gives a shout-out to his former San Luis Obispo County stomping grounds, praising the desserts at the Apple Farm Restaurant & Bakery in San Luis Obispo — “They’ve got tremendous pies,” Efron says — and describing a boisterous encounter with fans at an Arroyo Grande gas station.
“I don’t know why, but I’m starting to feel like a hometown hero,” Efron says.
To his credit, Efron makes it all the way through the final round of “Hot Ones” — eating a chicken wing doused in The Last Dab XXX, an extra-hot sauce, before showing off a basketball trick.
“Hot Ones” is just the latest high-profile appearance for the San Luis Obispo-born Efron, whose credits include “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile” and the “High School Musical” movies. He also has a YouTube channel with more than a million followers.
An Arroyo Grande High School graduate, he appeared in productions at the Great American Melodrama and Vaudeville in Oceano and PCPA-Pacific Conservatory Theatre in Santa Maria.
Efron stars on the upcoming Quibi series “Killing Zac Efron,” which finds the actor venturing “deep into the jungles of a remote, dangerous island to carve his own name in expedition history.”
This story was originally published April 3, 2020 at 3:45 PM.
