Hot Wings, Leaked Photos, and a Guilty Conscience

Vanessa Hudgens makes me feel mildly guilty. I liked her in High School Musical, liked her considerably more in Spring Breakers, and by The Princess Switch I’d decided she was just a genuinely warm person who got handed a Disney career and made something interesting out of it. Which is exactly why I feel slightly indecent about the fact that I’ve jerked off to her leaked nudes—she seems so good-natured about everything that it feels like stealing from someone who’d probably have just given you the thing if you’d asked. Easier to redirect to someone who’s openly and cheerfully unbothered by that kind of attention, like Sasha Grey, who has made it abundantly clear she doesn’t need your conscience in the room.

Anyway, Hudgens appeared on Hot Ones, First We Feast’s ongoing exercise in edible self-destruction, hosted by Sean Evans. The format is a ten-wing ladder, each one coated in progressively more violent hot sauce, interview questions running throughout. Early wings are easy—almost pleasant. Then around wing seven the capsaicin accumulates and the conversation starts to break apart. Someone always reaches for the cold water. It never helps. It makes everything worse. Everyone reaches for it anyway.

She worked through a plate of vegan wings while talking about her new film with Jennifer Lopez, what it’s like working with James Franco and 50 Cent, and why certain fans genuinely frighten her. She’s funny, self-aware, and completely unguarded once the heat gets to her. If all you know about Vanessa Hudgens is High School Musical—if the opening notes of "We’re All in This Together" make you want to lie down in traffic—this interview will rehabilitate her entirely. And afterward you’ll feel just as conflicted about those photos as I always have.