Key Points
Heated Rivalry creator Jacob Tierney is shutting down speculation over whether his lead actors, Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, are queer like the characters they play.
“You can’t ask questions like that when you’re casting, right? It’s actually against the law. So what you have to gauge is somebody’s enthusiasm and willingness to do the work,” he said.
The Canadian romantic drama set in the world of professional hockey has gone viral since its Nov. 28 release.
Heated Rivalry series creator Jacob Tierney doesn’t think the sexual identities of his stars are anyone’s business but their own.
The steamy Canadian romantic drama set in the world of professional hockey premiered only a handful of days ago. But it’s already set the internet ablaze with gobsmacked reactions to particularly racy scenes, theories over what’ll become of the budding romance between the titular rivals Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie), and the potential realities behind their daring performances.
Needless to say, some fans have already run wild with speculation over whether the relatively unknown young stars are queer, like their characters. But Tierney displayed no interest in such lines of inquiry in a recent interview with the LGBTQ+ publication Xtra.
“I don’t think there’s any reason to get into that stuff,” he said. “I’ll tell you something about the casting of both of these roles. You can’t ask questions like that when you’re casting, right? It’s actually against the law. So what you have to gauge is somebody’s enthusiasm and willingness to do the work.”
HBO Max
Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie on ‘Heated Rivalry’
Williams and Storrie won their respective parts, according to Tierney, because they passed these particular tests during the casting process with flying colors.
“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,” he shared.
Williams and Storrie followed Tierney’s lead, delicately avoiding the question. But they did speak to the chemistry that quickly sparked between them during their initial readings.
“I remember Connor being very hard to get through, which only fed my performance because he was hard to reach and it was frustrating,” Williams shared, with Storrie adding, “Something that sticks out to me, and something that people don’t really talk about a lot is that different projects have different tones built into them… It felt very obvious to me the moment that I read with Hudson that we were making the same TV show.”
Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.
Tierney, who also co-created, wrote, directed, and starred in the Ontario-set sitcom Letterkenny, has certainly amped up his response to the chemistry question in other interviews.
Prompted to recall a risqué comment made by Williams after his first chemistry test with Storrie, Tierney shared to Out that the newcomer told him, “‘The other guy was good, but Connor felt like he was going to pin me down and f— me.'”
Heated Rivalry is currently streaming on Crave and HBO Max, with new episodes dropping every Friday through the end of the month.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com ’
