BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt

Known as the on­ly pan-Caribbean en­ter­tain­ment tele­vi­sion chan­nel to cre­ate a pass­port to all things Caribbean, Tem­po Net­work has now teamed up with Amer­i­can-based Com­plex Net­works and FilmTT to launch in Trinidad and To­ba­go—Hot Ones Caribbean Edi­tion—a lo­calised ver­sion of the US YouTube en­ter­tain­ment hit se­ries—Hot Ones.

Sched­uled for a June pre­miere, the show, host­ed by Amer­i­can YouTu­ber Sean Evans, which fea­tures celebri­ties in­vit­ed to chomp down on chick­en wings laced with pep­per sauce that goes from low to the hottest in­ten­si­ty, while they talk about their lives and ca­reers, will now take a Caribbean spin with lo­cal celebri­ties in the “hot” seat.

Tem­po founder and CEO Fred­er­ick Mor­ton said bring­ing the pop­u­lar show to the Caribbean and more specif­i­cal­ly to T&T was just a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion.

“The Caribbean is so much known as a hot place. It just struck me as like the right thing for the re­gion,” he said.

But in ad­di­tion to the cli­mate and the “hot vibe” of its peo­ple, mak­ing T&T the per­fect can­di­date Mor­ton, who took Guardian Me­dia on a trip to a Matu­ra pep­per farm where we were in­tro­duced to the in­dige­nous Moru­ga Scor­pi­on Pep­per and its fam­i­ly mem­bers—the Scor­pi­on Butch T and the Moru­ga Red—all hav­ing star­ring roles in the lo­cal se­ries, said with the is­land be­ing home to these ‘hot’ trea­sures, it did not take much to per­suade Com­plex Net­work, to ex­pand to T&T shores.

“We’re here in Trinidad and of course it is home to the scor­pi­on pep­per. So I put all of that to­geth­er. I made that call to the folks at Com­plex who I knew…made the pitch…I cre­at­ed a pi­lot lo­cal­ly. It is a hot pi­lot, done with a lo­cal co­me­di­an, and one of your lo­cal tal­ents here, and I talked it through with Com­plex.

“We had sev­er­al con­ver­sa­tions and over a pe­ri­od of sev­er­al months, we came to an agree­ment that the Caribbean was the right place to bring Hot Ones,” Mor­ton ex­plained.

While the show might pro­vide laugh­ter from watch­ing lo­cal celebri­ties pant af­ter tast­ing pep­per sauce of­fer­ings from man­u­fac­tures in T&T and the re­gion.

When asked what more can Hot Ones do for T&T, Mor­ton said it was poised to boost busi­ness in the spheres of trade, tourism, and es­pe­cial­ly agri­cul­ture.

A pepper farm worker harvests some Scorpion Butch T peppers at Kingdom Hall Avenue, Matura on Wednesday.

Abraham Diaz

“The op­por­tu­ni­ty here is vast. This show im­pacts so many in­dus­tries in the Caribbean, par­tic­u­lar­ly an in­dus­try I feel needs a lot more at­ten­tion be­cause we’re an agri-state, so to speak…a re­gion. And the agri­cul­tur­al in­dus­try has not got­ten the spot­light that it de­serves and we ought to give the farm­ers and all the folks that work in the in­dus­try…the man­u­fac­tur­ers, food, be­cause we need food se­cu­ri­ty right.

“We’re in the midst of a pan­dem­ic, you can’t af­ford to im­port every­thing…you have to el­e­vate things that will feed your pop­u­lace,” Mor­ton said.

Mor­ton said Hot Ones reach­ing T&T has al­so al­ready cre­at­ed to­tal-lo­cal em­ploy­ment.

“The en­tire team is lo­cal. My en­tire pro­duc­tion crew is a com­plete lo­cal team.

“Big up the whole Hot Ones Tem­po Trinidad team. And that’s from pro­duc­tion to le­gal, to mar­ket­ing to sales, to PR…to­tal­ly lo­cal. And of course, they’re at­tached to my re­gion­al team and my in­ter­na­tion­al team. So lots of op­por­tu­ni­ties,” he boast­ed.

Guardian Me­dia al­so got the op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet and chat with Sharon Chau­ti­lal, di­rec­tor of the fam­i­ly-owned and lo­cal man­u­fac­tured Ha­banero Trinidad Pep­per Sauce, who said when the com­pa­ny got the call to have the brand fea­tured in Hot Ones, they were ec­sta­t­ic.

“We were thrilled be­cause we’ve been fol­low­ing Hot Ones, in­ter­na­tion­al so long. So many peo­ple con­tact us and say ‘aye Sharon yuh need to get the prod­ucts on this.’ But it’s not that easy as you think, so when we heard, they were go­ing to have a Hot Ones Caribbean…es­pe­cial­ly we got even more ex­cit­ed when we heard, they were part­ner­ing with Tem­po,” Chau­ti­lal re­lat­ed.

She said Hot Ones opens a door for T&T to sell an ex­pe­ri­ence.

“We thought that here we got an op­por­tu­ni­ty, not just to sell or mar­ket the pep­per sauce, but we’re mar­ket­ing our en­tire cul­ture, arts and en­ter­tain­ment, and so on. And it aligns very well with how our com­pa­ny mar­kets our prod­ucts. Be­cause we try not to just sell a pep­per sauce…any­body can sell a pep­per sauce. We want to sell the whole ex­pe­ri­ence.”

Bertie’s Pep­per Sauce, an­oth­er of T&T’s lo­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured brands, will al­so star in the Hot Ones Caribbean se­ries along with Bar­ba­dos’ Old Dup­py and US Vir­gin is­land’s, Alvin’s Hot Pep­per Sauce.

While chick­en wings might be syn­ony­mous with Hot Ones, don’t think for a sec­ond it will be the on­ly bite fea­tured. Mor­ton said in ad­di­tion to ex­hibit­ing the beau­ty and his­to­ry of the coun­try, Hot Ones would al­so show­case T&T’s culi­nary di­ver­si­ty.

“We will go out in­to the streets to make sure it’s not just about hot wings, but it’s about pholourie, it’s about dou­bles, it about jerk chick­en…all the stuff that we’re known for, not just the hot wings.”