'Heated Rivalry' Creator Talks Casting Lead Actors Connor Storrie & Hudson Williams, & Filming the Many Steamy Scenes

Heated Rivalry is coming out this week and the creator is dishing on the book to screen adaptation!

Letterkenny and Shoresy‘s Jacob Tierney created the upcoming series, which he also wrote and directs, based on the novel by Rachel Reid.

Ahead of the show’s debut this Friday (November 28) on Crave in Canada and HBO Max in the US and Australia, Jacob dished on the casting process that led to Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams playing the lead characters.

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“There was a lot of hesitation. A lot of people didn’t want to read for it,” he recalled to Teen Vogue about the casting process. The roles required a certain physique, as well as the need to be comfortable with a lot of nudity and intimacy as there are three sex scenes in every episode.

After making it to the final round, Jacob knew Connor and Hudson were the right fit after they did a chemistry read via Zoom.

“Connor was just so confident and so funny. He had all the slyness I wanted out of Ilya,” Jacob dished. “Hudson had all the seriousness I wanted out of Shane. Hudson was also a little more tentative about everything than Connor was.”

Jacob also dished on how the story is told through sex.

“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,” he shared, with nearly all of the sex scenes from the book making it into the show. “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.’”

On the first day of filming, they had to film a “racy Las Vegas hotel room scene,” and Jacob noted what while looking at the dailies, you could hear the actors “just checking in with other.”

“‘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,” he recalled. “I think we can hold these shots for so long, because they’re so compelling together.”

If you missed it, you can watch the trailer and learn more here!