If you were on HBO Max or heavily online this past holiday weekend, you’ve probably already heard of Heated Rivalry — the steamy Canadian TV drama that focuses on rival hockey players entering romantic entanglements when they’re not on the ice.
As is to be expected, there’s quite a bit of attention on the show’s romantic leads, who are also relative newcomers when it comes to greater visibility in acting. There’s Hudson Williams, who plays Shane Hollander…
And Connor Storrie, who plays Ilya Rozanov.
Inevitably, speculation has emerged as to Hudson and Connor’s IRL sexual orientations, since they are both portraying queer-identifying characters on TV — and in a recent interview with Xtra, the show’s creator Jacob Tierney had the perfect response to such potentially invasive queries.
In the interview, Jacob said there isn’t “any reason to get into” how the actors identify in real life. “You can’t ask questions like that when you’re casting, right? It’s actually against the law,” he said. “So what you have to gauge is somebody’s enthusiasm and willingness to do the work.”
“And that’s what’s so impressive about both of these guys is they came into this being like, ‘Yeah, we’re here to do this, and we are here to make this story feel authentic and to be as real as possible.’ And they fucking hit it out of the park.”
Jacob went on to say that Hudson and Connor’s “chemistry was just insane” during the casting process. “It was always going to be about chemistry,” he said. “We loved both of them separately and then seeing them together, it was just like perfection. We couldn’t ask for more.”
Clearly, fans are asking for more as well — and they’ll get it in the form of two new Heated Rivalry episodes every Friday on HBO Max.