Chris Evans is PEOPLE‘s new Sexiest Man Alive. He succeeds fellow Marvel man Paul Rudd and also agreed to share his title with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who maintains that he will hold the title “in perpetuity” after his official 2016 reign. John Oliver pretended to be very unhappy when the Evans announcement surfaced on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, so what are the criteria for this achievement?
Well, there are no set guidelines for this declaration from PEOPLE. At times, it seems that a recipient might have a particular project to promote, but that doesn’t appear to be the case for Evans, who’s been slowing the heck down after a lengthy Captain America run and is currently working on that Amazon Christmas movie with The Rock. However, CNN did speak with PEOPLE Editor-in-Chief Dan Wakeford, who revealed that the process “this year” was that “we really wanted to choose somebody who is kind, and who is good and is nice.”
Obviously, the man in question should also be deemed objectively and subjectively sexy, and from there, Wakeford continued:
“There are so many different variables and ways of approaching it,” Wakeford said. “A starting point often is, when we want to make a decision, is to think about the zeitgeist, think about what is sexy at the moment. What do people find appealing at the moment? … We have more than 90 million consumers a month stepping into the People brand, so we’ve got a lot of data at our fingertips.”
In other words, PEOPLE will do their thing however they wish, but Evans seems like a solid pick! And as also revealed in the cover story, his mom gave her approval, so the deal is sealed.
(Via CNN)