Author reveals why Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie nearly lost their roles in Heated Rivalry

It’s so hard to imagine anyone else playing Shane and Ilya in Heated Rivalry other than Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, but the author has now revealed they nearly lost the roles.

After the huge success of the raunchy gay hockey romance show, it feels like Hudson and Connor were the obvious choice from the very start. It’s almost like they were made for these roles.

But the author of Heated Rivalry, Rachel Reid, has admitted that she originally thought Hudson and Connor were the wrong choices for the show. The literal woman who created Shane and Ilya wasn’t sold on them. Wild.

So, why didn’t she want Hudson and Connor to play Shane and Ilya?

via HBO

In an interview with Variety, Rachel explained that Hudson wasn’t who she pictured as Shane at first. She said, “At first, not quite, because I was just looking at still images of them on Instagram. Hudson had a lot of pictures where he looked like a badass and he was smoking or showing off all of his tattoos. I was like, ‘I’m not seeing it.’”

Rachel also originally wanted Ilya to be played by an actual Russian actor. Like, that was a proper dealbreaker for her. She thought that if Ilya wasn’t believably Russian, the whole story would fall apart.

“I know that Jacob [the showrunner] was very excited about Connor. But it was a thing where we said that he pretty much has to be actually Russian, because if he’s not, it’s going to be so distracting. People will be able to tell,” she said.

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She then added, “The whole thing falls apart if he’s not believably Russian. So when he told me, ‘Well, he’s American and does not have Russian heritage, but he’s really good,’ I was like, ‘Well, OK, if you say so.’”

But as soon as Rachel met Hudson and Connor in person and saw them acting together on set, she completely flipped. She said straight up that the second she saw them in character, she knew they were perfect.

“I can’t imagine anyone else playing them,” she said. Well, same.

Now they’re literally the faces of Heated Rivalry. The chemistry is incredible, the fandom is feral, and the show simply wouldn’t exist in the same way without them.

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