The creator of the new series Heated Rivalry has shared how the show’s lead actors, Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, created a comfortable and professional environment from the very first day of filming. The series, which is based on Rachel Reid’s queer hockey romance novel, required its stars to tackle intimate scenes and a complex eight-year relationship.
Jacob Tierney, the writer and director behind the show, explained that the casting process was challenging because the roles demanded a specific physicality and comfort with nudity. Many actors were hesitant to audition. However, the immediate connection and professionalism between Williams and Storrie convinced him they were perfect for the parts of rival hockey players Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov.
Casting Challenges and a Digital Chemistry Test
Jacob Tierney, known for his work on Letterkenny and Shoresy, adapted the book for the screen. He revealed that finding the right actors was difficult.
“There was a lot of hesitation. A lot of people didn’t want to read for it,” he said about the casting process.
The roles required actors who were not only convincing as elite athletes but also comfortable with the show’s many intimate scenes, which feature prominently as a way the two characters communicate over the years.
The search ended when Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams did a chemistry read together over Zoom. Tierney knew immediately they were the right choice. He noted that Connor Storrie brought a confident and funny energy that perfectly captured Ilya’s sly nature. Hudson Williams, meanwhile, had the seriousness needed for Shane, though Tierney noted Williams was “a little more tentative about everything than Connor was.”
Williams recalled that Storrie’s commitment to the character was so intense from the first audition that it was initially frustrating.
“I was briefed that [Connor] was American, but as soon as I got in the audition room with him, I thought I was talking with a Slavic Russian boy,” Williams said. “It was frustrating for me because he was going off-script a little bit.”
Building a Believable On-Screen Dynamic
The relationship between the two main characters is the core of the show. Shane Hollander is a disciplined Canadian player, while Ilya Rozanov is a more enigmatic Russian athlete. Their story begins in 2009 as rivals drafted into the same professional league and follows their secret relationship over eight years.
Storrie explained that his character, Ilya, uses his power on the ice to compensate for feeling powerless in his personal life.
“It’s like, ‘I’m not going to let you know exactly what I’m thinking, because I want to be in power. I’m not going to give you the time of day at first, because I want to be empowered,’” Storrie said.
Williams described Shane as someone for whom “being perfect and being gay — for some reason, those two things don’t fit.” He said Shane’s journey involves reconciling his feelings for Ilya with his own idea of a perfect life.
Intimacy as Communication and a Supportive Set
The series is notable for its frank depiction of sex, which Tierney defended as essential to the story.
“Because of the way the story is laid out, it takes place over eight years, and these are people who learn about each other through f-cking, so the sex didn’t feel gratuitous,” Tierney explained. “This is how they communicate: They meet up three times a year and have sex until they hit a point where they’re like, ‘Oh God, we keep doing this. We must have feelings for each other.’”
Tierney was committed to portraying consent and safe sex clearly, noting that Ilya is “a very sensitive and empathetic lover” despite his carefree exterior.
This focus on intimacy required a high level of trust between the actors. That trust was evident from the very first day of filming, which involved shooting a “racy Las Vegas hotel room scene.” Reviewing the raw footage from that day, Tierney heard the actors continuously checking in with each other.
“You can hear them just checking in with each other, being like, ‘You good? You comfortable?’ ‘You good? You comfortable?’ They’re so present with one another, and they were down to make this as good as they could right away, which is obviously huge,” Tierney remarked.
He added that their comfort with each other allowed for longer, more compelling shots.
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Preparation Beyond the Physical
Both actors faced unique challenges in preparing for their roles. For Storrie, this meant learning to speak Russian for his character. In the three weeks before production started in Toronto, he took four-hour lessons to prepare for 25 pages of Russian dialogue.
“I think we killed all the Russian within the first month of the shoot. The second half, I was able to not focus on that, and it was a totally different experience,” Storrie said.
Williams admitted that he had his own preconceptions, worrying the show might look like “Shoresy for some reason, but with sex,” a reference to Tierney’s other hockey-related show.
Heated Rivalry premiered its first episode at the image+nation Queer Film Festival in Montreal, where it was met with an enthusiastic response from fans. The six-episode series began streaming on November 28 on Crave in Canada and on HBO Max in the U.S. and Australia.
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