{"id":325577,"date":"2025-12-02T06:48:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T06:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/325577\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T06:48:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T06:48:08","slug":"are-heated-rivalry-actors-gay-creator-shuts-down-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/325577\/","title":{"rendered":"Are ‘Heated Rivalry’ Actors Gay? Creator Shuts Down Question"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cHeated Rivalry<\/a>\u201d creator Jacob Tierney said during a recent interview with Xtra<\/a> that the real-life sexualities of his stars are irrelevant compared to the \u201centhusiasm and willingness\u201d they bring to HBO\u2019s new queer, sports drama series.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s any reason to get into that stuff,\u201d Tierney said when asked if the sexualities of stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie are relevant to the show. \u201cI\u2019ll tell you something about the casting of both of these roles. You can\u2019t ask questions like that when you\u2019re casting, right? It\u2019s actually against the law. So what you have to gauge is somebody\u2019s enthusiasm and willingness to do the work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe added, \u201cAnd that\u2019s what\u2019s so impressive about both of these guys is they came into this being like, \u2018Yeah, we\u2019re here to do this, and we are here to make this story feel authentic and to be as real as possible.\u2019 And they fucking hit it out of the park.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHeated Rivalry\u201d stars Williams and Storrie as emerging hockey pros Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, respectively. Despite playing for rival teams, the pair develops a romance off the ice.<\/p>\n

\n\tWilliams recently told Out Magazine that his chemistry with Storrie<\/a> has an intense and unexpected authenticity unrivaled by other potential co-stars.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI read with one other possible Ilya, and it was good. But something about Connor,\u201d he said. \u201cThere 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\tIn the same interview, Tierney recalled meeting with Williams after the fact: \u201cHudson told me, \u2018The other guy was good, but Connor felt like he was going to pin me down and fuck me,\u2019\u201d later adding, \u201cThat is literally what he said. And I was like, \u2018Well, I think I cast this right.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cHeated Rivalry\u201d creator Jacob Tierney said during a recent interview with Xtra that the real-life sexualities of his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325578,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[88,162094,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-325577","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-heated-rivalry","10":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}