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As the Heated Rivalry fandom continues to grow after the Season 1 finale, the show is hitting particularly close to home for a very specific demographic.
Hudson Williams, who stars in the Crave/HBO Max series as Montreal Metros hockey star Shane Hollander, recently revealed that he’s received “lovely anonymous emails” from professional athletes who are fans of the show.
“It’s definitely the people who reach out somewhat anonymously who are like, ‘I’m a professional player still, and I’m still in the closet,'” he said on SiriusXM’s Andy Cohen Live, noting he’s heard from “hockey players, football players, basketball players.”
“So, then they’re reaching out to Rachel [Reid], our author, who will then kind of relay these lovely anonymous emails. And sometimes they’re just reaching out privately through Instagram,” added Williams. “And those ones are the ones that really just kind of hit you and go, ‘Oh, so this is a fun show, and it’s celebratory, but also sometimes it’s just hitting people right in the nerve.’
Based on Reid’s Game Changers novels, the Jacob Tierney-created series follows the affair between Ilya (Connor Storrie) and Shane (Williams) as they begin to fall in love over several years, sneaking away to see each other when their teams are playing.
Following its Season 2 renewal, Tierney previously spoke to Deadline about the show’s growing relevance with the LGBTQ community and other audiences.
“It is nice to be a part of a show that is doing something like this, that’s reminding people that there’s loads of audiences here and that they can be queer and queer adjacent, our allies, our friends, our families,” said Tierney. “If this was just gay people watching this show, we wouldn’t be talking about it right now, let’s be real.”
English (US) ·