Conan O’Brien Describes the Unpleasant Aftermath of His Viral 'Hot Ones' Appearance

Conan O'Brien nearly broke the internet with his viral Hot Ones appearance, while promoting his new Max series, Conan O'Brien Must Go earlier this month. In the now-infamous episode, the 61-year-old threw caution to the wind, despite not being a fan of spicy food, not only trying each and every wing but rubbing hot sauce all over his skin and chugging it straight from the bottle.

And from the sounds of it, he very much suffered for his art.

"I was aware of the show, obviously, its very successful show. I can't say I was expert," the former late night host explained on the latest episode of his Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast. "I went in thinking, well whatever happens, I just have to eat all the wings, and just go for it and make a fool of myself. And so I kind of had that plan in mind, but didn’t know much beyond that."

Given that O'Brien apparently doesn't even put Tabasco or Tapatío on his food, his co-hosts marveled at how he managed to handle the heat. "If I think something will be funny, I’ll do it and deal with it later," he admitted. "And yeah, I did deal with it later."

"I think my eyes were incredibly runny, and my mouth really hurt," he continued. "The thing that was the most interesting was that my wedding ring—because I was rubbing my hands around in the sauce. And you wash your hands right afterward, but some of the sauce got underneath my wedding ring ... It was burning and burning and I took it off and I was like, ‘Oh right, there’s acid underneath it.'"

"Here's what I decided to do. After I ingested all that, I wanted it to be useful," O'Brien said. "So I found a construction site where they were doing spot welding, and I went there, and I said, 'Gentleman, if you want, I can weld these girders for you, in about I’m guessing, about 15 minutes. You’ll need to avert your eyes because I’ll be dropping my pants.'"

"So there’s a building in the Mid-Wilshire district that’s going up, and I think I did about 65 rivets in the building," he quipped. "And people were driving by saying, 'Conan O’Brien’s pants are around his ankles, and I think fire is shooting out of his ass, and he’s welding a building.'"

And here's the biggest problem, I had to join the union," O’Brien joked, noting that he was told that section of the building would stand forever. "These are heat temperatures we've never seen."

But in addition to the physical pain he experienced, O'Brien's antics led him to immediately trend on social media, with many fans bringing up some of his other greatest hits. In fact, seeing the outpouring of support actually made some of his friends fear that something bad had happened to him.

"[It was] all very sweet, but I had a bunch of friends who saw my name all over Twitter and the first assumption is, 'He’s dead,'" he added. "So I did have people say, 'Oh my God, I thought, 'Finally!'"

All four episode of Conan O'Brien Must Go are currently available to stream on Max, and you can watch his Hot Ones episode below.