The Canadian sports romance series “Heated Rivalry” has fans talking about the stars’ sexual orientations.
Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie play Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, respectively. Shane and Ilya are the captains of rival hockey teams who have a secret affair off the ice. After “Heated Rivalry” premiered on HBO Max — and on Crave in Canada — some viewers began wondering if Williams and Storrie are gay in real life.
Series creator Jacob Tierney, who based the show on Rachel Reid’s “Game Changers” book series, doesn’t think the actors’ personal lives are relevant.
“I don’t think there’s any reason to get into that stuff. … 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,” Tierney told Xtra last month. “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 f—ing hit it out of the park.”
For the show’s steamy sex scenes, Williams and Storrie worked with intimacy coordinator Chala Hunter. Williams told Xtra that Hunter gave them a healthy mix of direction and freedom.
“I’ve had stifling intimacy coordinators before, where sometimes it’s too rehearsed or too restricted to the point where the actors are saying, ‘We can go further than this.’ Our show, even though we had to get good blocking and choreography and the technical stuff down, after that we talked about the who, what, where and when. Asking ourselves, ‘What does this mean in the story?’” Williams explained. “And then that almost needs to be reminded because you can be up in your head about the technical aspects. And I think Chala was a good reminder of, ‘OK, you still need to sell this.’”
The first two episodes of “Heated Rivalry” dropped on Friday, Nov. 28. Moving forward, new episodes will be released one at a time on Fridays at 3 a.m. ET. Fans are eager for more of the NSFW romance series.
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“I’ve seen enough, go ahead and greenlight six seasons and [a] movie #heatedrivalry,” one viewer wrote via X.
“Heated Rivalry is a perfect show. no notes,” another fan tweeted.
“Heated Rivalry” is available to stream on HBO Max.
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