Vanessa Hudgens on Hot Ones

I like Vanessa Hudgens. Always have—High School Musical, Spring Breakers, The Princess Switch, all of it. I like her enough that when I’m jerking off to those leaked nudes of hers I feel bad about it, like it’s wrong because she’s actually such a genuinely nice person. So I feel guilty and switch to Sasha Grey instead, figure at least she’d be cool with someone looking at her asshole.

She showed up on Hot Ones with Sean Evans. The show where they put celebrities in front of increasingly spicy wings while they’re trying to give interviews. Starts easy, gets worse. Everyone ends up sweating, mouth on fire. The only relief is cold water, which anyone who’s done this knows actually makes it worse.

Hudgens sat there working through vegan wings, talking about her new film with Jennifer Lopez, what it was like working with James Franco and 50 Cent, dealing with obsessed fans. She’s trying to keep it together while clearly suffering, but she’s actually engaged with it—not just performing the pain. There’s something appealing about that.

If you only knew her as the High School Musical girl and wrote her off, this is going to make you realize you missed something. She’s obviously an actual person with her own thing going on. And then the next time you find yourself looking at those leaked photos, you’re going to feel different about it. Not exactly ashamed, but aware. Like you know too much about her now to be a casual creep about it.