The Invite star Penélope Cruz is one of Hollywood’s most beloved actors. But even she could not fake it when confronted with the array of mouth-scorching sauces in front of her on the latest episode of Hot Ones.
“I’m very nervous,” she told host Sean Evans. “I’m doing this because I love your show, but I love laughing at other people when they do it.” The Spanish star may have spoken to soon in the intro to the episode, because by the end of her hot sauce gauntlet, she was begging for some ice cream and cursing her decision to take the challenge.
Cruz said she agreed to do the show because her kids told her to, before snickering that she was for sure “cooked.” A few wings in, Cruz was doing fine, as Evans noted that he had her good friend actress Salma Hayek on the show four years ago and wondered if the pair had had any good adventures lately.
“We’re really close. It’s like an older sister for me,” she said of Hayek, describing how, despite being terrified of clowns, they both dressed as them for Halloween last year when things went very, very wrong on a flight. “I don’t like clowns. They are scary no matter what. But imagine being on a plane full of people and 10 of us were dressed like clowns,” she said, painting a vivid picture the show recreated with an animation. “And then the pilot said, ‘oxygen mask, we’re having a de-pressurization of cabin,'” she added, describing the flight attendants running around with oxygen masks and hiding in the bathroom.
“We were very lucky. We landed safely. But that was such a crazy bonding experience,” she recalled. “We landed and they had to put us on another plane because we were supposed to be shooting a few hours later. And of course we were late on set, but alive. And it was really crazy.”
As the Scoville level began to rise, Cruz, who avoids hot foods, said she thought people lie about how spicy things get on the show, brushing off the level of heat so far in her run, confidently asking Evans if she could get some kind of award for sprinting through his challenge.
She then talked about the rewarding nature of taking her teenage son and daughter with fellow Invite star Javier Bardem to see Bad Bunny in concert last year. “We were in the car [and] the kids introduced me to his music,” she said. “So I was like, ‘but these lyrics are not for you.’ You know, we were trying to fight that for a while, but then I was like non-stop listening by myself.”
They all went to see Benito in Puerto Rico at the launch of his historic 2025 No Me Quiero Ir de Aqui residency, where she and Bardem were special guests in the onstage VIP casita set. “I’ve already been five times. But the first one in Puerto Rico is when Benito came to me and asked me to go with him to [introduce a song] … And finally, my kids came to me and said, ‘Mom, finally we can say you are cool. We can say you are a cool mother.’ I was like, ‘thank you Benito. Thank you. It took me all these years.'”
While she continued to seem (mostly) unbothered by the spice, Evans hit upon the one thing that truly terrifies Cruz: driving. “I have a very deep fear of driving,” she admitted, before (name) dropping an A-list bombshell. “I’m going to say something that I was not planning to say, but my friend Bono gave me a car for my last birthday. How crazy that sounds but he gave me a car. And I think that is like the ultimate push to do it. Like after you get a car from Bono you don’t get your license? How crazy is that?”
Now, thanks to the U2 singer, Cruz said she’s considering taking lessons again. Maybe.
Her steely reserve finally broke down after tasting the 135,600 Da Bomb sauce, which she initially said she could handle, before reaching for a glass of milk and exclaiming in Spanish, “‘Very bad, very bad, very bad, horrible, horrible, you can’t describe [how bad]! It hurts!'” Dabbing her eyes and fanning herself, Cruz snapped at her off-camera family to stop laughing at her, threatening to slip some Bomb into their food the next day.
Finally succumbing to the heat, a red-eyed, huffing Cruz emerged triumphant, even as she lamented that the whole experience was “horrible,” begging Evans’ crew for some ice cream to soothe her flaming mouth.
The Invite, starring Cruz, Bardem, Seth Rogen and director Olivia Wilde, is in theaters on July 10.
Watch Cruz on Hot Ones below.
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