During an otherwise bleak news cycle, the stars of a queer Canadian hockey drama have managed to win hearts and minds.
The Hollywood Reporter highlighted the joyous (generational even) Heated Rivalry press run and how Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams made it one to remember.
As it turns out, witnessing two young, exceedingly green actors be so free in and genuinely enthusiastic about the moment they’re experiencing is refreshing and endearing. Neither one of them is above it or blasé about what is happening, as you so often see once fame hits — nor are they dismissive of or embarrassed by the premium smut that they’re promoting. In fact, when asked about the many explicit sex scenes in their hockey drama, Williams and Storrie — 24 and 25, respectively — have consistently offered honest, tender answers, and both have said they were considerably more comfortable filming those scenes than they were the emotional ones. “For me, it doesn’t feel spicy at all,” Storrie has said. “Like, that’s me and my best friend.”
The piece goes on to highlight Storrie and Williams’s on- and off-screen chemistry as the driving force behind this cultural phenomenon, especially in the way they can be both physically and emotionally comfortable and open with each other for public consumption,, both on the show and in real life.
Their press tour-turned-cultural moment has provided fans extensive opportunity to see and swoon over the pair laughing, teasing, dancing, petting, grabbing and declaring each other soulmates, or at least cosmically linked. “We’re both pretty tactile people in terms of love languages and how you express yourself,” Storrie has said. The two acquired matching “sex sells” tattoos after filming wrapped, which they’ve flashed in interviews; and earlier this month, Williams crashed with Storrie while in L.A. to promote the show at bars and malls and fancy parties.
Toggling between the show and the press tour has been a joyful respite from so much ugliness in the world. We need it. Maybe we even deserve it.
What is your favourite moment (or moments) from the HR press tour so far? What do you hope to see in the future?
