Highlights
- Anne Hathaway canceled her official Hot Ones interview because her doctors feared it could trigger an early labor.
- The actress filmed a fake Hot Ones scene for Verity, but she swapped real spicy food for dummy wings on the set.
- Hathaway wants to do the spicy gauntlet for real next year because she refuses to fake the physical experience.
Anne Hathaway is officially sitting out the internet’s favorite spicy gauntlet, and honestly, her uterus is to blame. The 43-year-old actress is expecting her third child with husband Adam Shulman.
That means her highly anticipated press tour for the psychological thriller Verity is missing its crown jewel: a complete capsaicin-induced meltdown across from Sean Evans.
Blame the medical professionals for ruining our fun. “My doctor said I couldn’t do it because I might go into early labor,” Hathaway confessed during a recent appearance on the Talk of the Townsends podcast. Yes, the hot sauce lineup is apparently potent enough to organically evict a fetus.
Hathaway genuinely wanted to suffer for our entertainment. The actress viewed the spicy gauntlet as the ultimate promotional tool for her latest project. “I thought that I was gonna be able to do the Hot Ones challenge to do press for this film because it just made sense,” she explained.
The timing simply refused to cooperate with her viral marketing dreams. “But then I got pregnant, and my doctor said I couldn’t do it because I might go into early labour,” she reiterated.
Instead of sweating through her designer wardrobe, Hathaway has to protect her unborn child from weaponized condiments.
The irony here is incredibly rich. Her Verity character, author Verity Crawford, actually sits down with Evans for a fictional Hot Ones interview in the movie.
Hathaway pitched the cameo to the filmmakers herself. She demanded the scene to immediately establish Verity as an “iconic cultural figure” right out of the gate.
But filming the on-screen segment required some serious Hollywood smoke and mirrors. Hathaway couldn’t physically push her limits for the cameras while pregnant. “I did the first three wings for real, and then I switched to dummy wings,” she admitted about the tricky shoot.
Hathaway views the real, unscripted challenge as a sacred celebrity rite of passage. She even compared the grueling interview format to a major adolescent milestone. “You don’t want your first kiss ever in your life to be like an on-screen kiss,” she declared.
She demands absolute authenticity for her impending palate destruction. “You want that to be, like, a real thing where you’re not playing a character at the same time as experiencing something physically,” she reasoned. Choking on ghost peppers is a deeply personal physical journey, not just an acting gig.
Fans desperate to watch the Oscar winner cry over a chicken wing will just have to be patient. Hathaway, who already shares sons Jonathan, 10, and Jack, 6, with Shulman, is firmly prioritizing motherhood. Verity marks her fifth film of 2026, so she certainly deserves a break from the heat.
“So I still haven’t done the gauntlet yet,” Hathaway stated matter-of-factly.
Fortunately, she hasn’t closed the door on the hot seat entirely. “I’m not sure when that’s going to happen,” she teased, offering a glimmer of hope to sickos everywhere. “Maybe next year”. Until then, she’s strictly sticking to prenatal vitamins.
