‘Heated Rivalry’ Creator Says Sexuality of Steamy Hockey Series’ Leads Shouldn’t Matter: ‘Can’t Ask Questions Like That’
“Heated Rivalry” creator Jacob Tierney is shutting down online speculation about the real-life sexualities of his steamy hockey drama’s leading men.
After the HBO Max original set social media ablaze with clips, memes and all-around fervor for the star-crossed romance and actors Hudson Williams and Connor Storries, fans theorized whether the relative newcomers are queer-identifying like their athlete characters Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov.
“Heated Rivalry” follows the budding romance between hockey stars and rivals Shane (Williams) and Ilya (Storrie), and it does not shy away from provocative sex scenes, much like the romance novel source material.
The series’ raw authenticity has raised interest in Williams and Storrie’s personal lives, but “Heated Rivalry” creator Tierney said that fans shouldn’t speculate on things like their sexuality. When the stars were asked about how they identify in an interview with Xtra, Tierney quickly interjected, answering on behalf of the duo.
“I don’t think there’s any reason to get into that stuff,” he said of the debate of whether queer people should play queer characters. “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.
“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–king hit it out of the park,” he added.
Williams and Storrie did not appear to elaborate on the question, but they did discuss initial chemistry reads while auditioning for the series. Each of their characters are closeted in the beginning of the series, and Williams said that in early auditions, Storrie was hard to read.
“I remember Connor being very hard to get through, which only fed my performance because he was hard to reach and it was frustrating,” he said. “He walked out of his Zoom frame and I had to call him back into frame. And it was great.”
Storrie, who previously appeared in “Joker: Folie à Deux,” said that the duo understood the tone of the passionate romance series.
“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,” he said. “It felt very obvious to me the moment that I read with Hudson that we were making the same TV show.”
“They read together and we were all like, ‘Oh my god, this is f–king done. Flush the rest of it down the toilet,'” Tierney chimed in. “Their chemistry was just insane. It was always going to be about chemistry. We loved both of them separately and then seeing them together, it was just perfection.”
“Heated Rivalry” is currently streaming on Crave and HBO Max with new episodes dropping every Friday through the end of the month.
The post ‘Heated Rivalry’ Creator Says Sexuality of Steamy Hockey Series’ Leads Shouldn’t Matter: ‘Can’t Ask Questions Like That’ appeared first on TheWrap.