{"id":161533,"date":"2025-12-01T00:50:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T00:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/161533\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T00:50:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T00:50:07","slug":"heated-rivalry-stars-recall-audition-chemistry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/161533\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Heated Rivalry’ Stars Recall Audition Chemistry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAs Heated Rivalry<\/a> sets the sport of hockey on fire, the stars and showrunner of the new Crave<\/a>\/HBO Max<\/a> series are teasing the behind-the-scenes chemistry.<\/p>\n

\n\tJacob Tierney<\/a>, creator of the LGBTQ<\/a> sports romance, revealed that Hudson Williams<\/a> and Connor Storrie<\/a> clicked \u201cquite instantly\u201d during the audition process, as the former even told him the latter seemed like he was going \u201cto pin me down and f*ck me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHudson was the third actor that I read with,\u201d Storrie, who plays Ilya Rozanov, Russian-American player for the Boston Raiders, recounted to Out Magazine<\/a>. \u201cThe first two I was like, \u2018Okay, this is cool,\u2019 and then Hudson came on. Jacob actually texted me directly and was like, \u2018What do you think?\u2019 And I was like, \u2018Yeah, Hudson, for sure.\u2019 Instantly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWilliams, who stars as Ottowa-born Montreal Metros pro Shane Hollander, said, \u201cI read with one other possible Ilya, and it was good. But something about Connor\u2026 There was an inexplicable X-factor that just felt realer than what I thought it could possibly be. And that was something. I had a quote I told Jacob, at one point, about my read with Connor in particular.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTierney recalled, \u201cHudson told me, \u2018The other guy was good, but Connor felt like he was going to pin me down and f*ck me.\u2019 \u2026 That is literally what he said. And I was like, \u2018Well, I think I cast this right.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tHudson Williams as Shane Hollander and Connor Storrie as Ilya Rozanov in \u2018Heated Rivalry\u2019 (Sabrina Lantos)<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey were essentially cast at the same time. It was very clear to us that we needed to find Shane and Ilya together,\u201d added Tierney. \u201cThis show lives and dies with them, so we needed to make sure that this worked together. There are terrific actors who are in, you know\u2026 They\u2019re just in different shows. You need to find the people who are going to be together in the same show, and that\u2019s what the two of them had quite instantly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWith new episodes available Fridays on Crave in Canada and HBO Max in the US, Heated Rivalry follows a pair of leading Major League Hockey players who harbor a secret: Away from their rivalry on the ice, they are secretly lovers who initially hide their confusing and complicated relationship from the world.<\/p>\n

\n\tCreated by Tierney and Brendan Brady from Accent Aigu Entertainment, the show was adapted from author Rachel Reid\u2019s novels. Fran\u00e7ois Arnaud, Robbie GK, Sophie N\u00e9lisse, Ksenia Daniela Kharlamova, Dylan Walsh and Christina Chang also star.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Heated Rivalry sets the sport of hockey on fire, the stars and showrunner of the new Crave\/HBO…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161534,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[458,97198,53560,146,6729,92651,97199,85,46,97200],"class_list":{"0":"post-161533","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-connor-storrie","10":"tag-crave","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-hbo-max","13":"tag-heated-rivalry","14":"tag-hudson-williams","15":"tag-il","16":"tag-israel","17":"tag-jacob-tierney"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}