It might have been harder for Chris Hemsworth to conquer Hot Ones than the Fury Road

First of all, congratulations are in order for everyone’s favorite spicy wing-based celebrity Saw trap, which will be competing at the primetime Emmys in the Outstanding Talk Show category this year. That means that Sean Evans, the host that just sent Chris Hemsworth into a coughing fit so extreme that he needed to practice his deep breathing techniques, is competing against the likes of Jimmy Kimmel, who gave the actor a lovely little “Furiosa Mimosa” (via sidekick Guillermo) when he appeared on his show last week. That hardly seems a fair fight—these legacy hosts are going to have to stop lobbing softballs pretty soon if they want to keep their status.

And we really do mean “fight,” at least in Chris Hemsworth’s case. The Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga actor genuinely struggled to breathe as he tried to answer a question after tasting the infamous Da’Bomb Beyond Insanity sauce, before diving for his glass of milk and eventually needing an ice cream assist from a producer off-screen. “I’m scared,” he said multiple times, before also choking out a sad little “I don’t want to play anymore.” Even as far as Hot Ones goes, it’s a little hard to watch.

As for the notoriously difficult production out in the Australian desert for his recent George Miller film, however, Hemsworth only had positive reviews. “There’s a certain amount of restrictions, expectations when playing the hero, especially as a superhero, that you have to abide by and stay within… to play the villain is fun,” he said of leaving Thor behind for his Wasteland warlord, Dementus. “The shackles are off and you’re allowed to be a little more unpredictable. There’s not as many rules to follow, so creatively it was fun.”

“The big monster truck vehicle that I was in was insane and loud and obnoxious and awesome,” he added. “It was epic, to say the least.”

But even though Hemsworth clearly struggled to beat the heat, he does understand the value of leaving one’s comfort zone, whether in his latest film or when he made the jump from soap opera work in 2007. When Evans asked what he gained from filming almost 200 episodes of Australian soap Home And Away early in his career, Hemsworth answered that the “technicality was the greatest thing—how to hit your mark, how to learn lines on the fly, how to just be comfortable in this setting with cameras and lights and things pointing in your direction.”

Still, he explained, “there’s a certain sort of comfort zone [you get into] which I had to get out of my system when I first started doing film.” If the same logic applies to talk shows, maybe it’s a good thing that Evans’ sauces clearly burned away whatever peaceful mimosa haze was left over from Kimmel.