When Adam Levine first started dating his now-wife, model Behati Prinsloo, he wanted to woo her with a special present. So, he enlisted the help of his The Voice costar, Blake Shelton — rookie mistake.
While serving as the guest on the Thursday (July 3) episode of Hot Ones, the Maroon 5 frontman revealed how the country star hilariously pranked him early on in his relationship with Prinsloo. “My now-wife, then brand-new girlfriend, she said she really wanted a teacup pig,” Levine told host Sean Evans.
“And I didn’t know what that was, but of course, the first person I would ask …,” he continued, referencing Shelton’s farming background. “So, I asked Blake, I’m like, ‘What’s a teacup pig?’ He’s like, ‘I’ll get you a teacup pig. Yeah, give me five grand.’”
Levine handed over the money, emphasizing to Shelton that he wanted a pig that would stay small and not grow to the size of a normal pig. Shelton returned with a piglet that the “Moves Like Jagger” singer then gifted to Prinsloo, but the setup “probably lasted like three weeks” before the couple got tired of the pig’s incessant squeals and gifted it to a little girl.
When that girl sent them photos of the pig six months later, revealing that it had grown to be “like, 400 pounds,” Levine says he realized that Shelton had knowingly given him a standard pig — not a “teacup” pig as he’d asked. “I’m just like, ‘Blake, bro, $5,000 for a pig that wasn’t a micro pig?’” Levine recalled, laughing.
“And he’s like, ‘You’re an idiot! There’s no such thing as f–king teacup pigs you dumba–!’” Levine continued. “So that was a pretty good prank that he played on me.”
The “God’s Country” singer and Levine served as coaches together on The Voice for 16 seasons, starting when the show first debuted in 2011, and pranked each other often on the NBC competition. Luckily, Shelton’s piggy prank didn’t impact Levine’s relationship; the Maroon 5 singer and Prinsloo would go on to tie the knot in 2014 and welcome three children together in the years after that.
As his kids are growing up, Levine — who will drop new album Love Is Like with his Maroon 5 bandmates in August — is now having fun coaching their youth basketball team. “My worst quality [as a coach] is I get hotheaded,” he told Evans. “And these kids are children. They’re eight years old. But when the refs are sleeping, man, I’m like, ‘Come on!’”
Speaking of being hotheaded, Levine definitely felt the heat on Hot Ones. He started by warning viewers that he gets “really deep sweat” under his eyes — “That’s going to be really attractive to share with everybody,” he quipped — many bites of chicken after which he started perspiring profusely from his lower lids, dabbing at them furiously with his napkin.
“Here it comes,” he said, gesturing to his face shortly after trying a bit of the absurdly spicy Da’ Bomb hot sauce.
Watch Levine’s full Hot Ones episode above.
