Hudson Williams says returning to Heated Rivalry after its breakout success felt ‘surreal’
Hudson Williams stars as Shane Hollander in the Crave Original series Heated Rivalry.
Photo credit: Courtesy of Bell Media/Crave.
When Hudson Williams returned to Heated Rivalry for Season 2, he found himself wondering whether he was playing Shane Hollander or doing an impression of him.
“Am I doing a Shane impression?” Williams recalled during a Sept. 17 TIFF conversation in Toronto.
Connor Storrie, who plays Ilya Rozanov opposite Williams’s Shane, had started Season 2 a day earlier and came away from his first day with a similar concern about finding his character again. When Williams stepped back into Shane’s world, he had to work through it too.
“It came back, thankfully,” he said.
Williams was at TIFF for Making Waves With… Hudson Williams as his new Crave series Yaga made its world premiere at the festival. At the same time, production was underway on the second season of the series that brought him international attention.
The six-episode first season of Heated Rivalry, based on Rachel Reid’s Game Changers books, was commissioned as a Crave Original and filmed in Ontario, including Toronto, Hamilton, Guelph and Muskoka. Williams and Storrie play professional hockey stars whose rivalry conceals a relationship that develops over years.
By the time Williams returned for Season 2, Heated Rivalry was available in more than 130 countries. The series had also collected a Peabody Award, Television Academy Honors recognition and a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding New Television Series.
Its Canadian Screen Awards showing brought the scale of the change closer to Williams himself. Heated Rivalry received 18 nominations and won 16 awards, setting a record for the most wins by a series in a single year. Williams won Best Lead Performer, Drama Series, for his performance as Shane.
He was returning to that character with many of the people who had been there for the first season. Williams credited creator Jacob Tierney and the returning crew with helping him settle back into the production, saying Tierney had managed to make the Season 2 set feel as small as it had the first time around.
Tierney remains the series’ writer, director and executive producer, while Williams and Storrie return as Shane and Ilya. The ensemble is expanding for Season 2, with Justice Smith and Charlie Gillespie among the actors joining the series in leading roles.
Season 2 is currently in production in Canada and is scheduled to premiere on Crave in spring 2027.
For Williams, returning to the physical production was one thing. His memories of making the first season had also become attached to everything that happened after audiences saw it.
“Our memory isn’t ours, it’s everyone’s,” he said during the TIFF conversation.
He described returning to Heated Rivalry as “surreal.”
TIFF was also introducing audiences to another Williams performance. He plays Henry Park in Yaga, an eight-episode Crave Original written and showrun by Kat Sandler and based on her play.
The mystery series stars Carrie-Anne Moss, Noah Reid and Clark Backo alongside Williams. Henry is the young heir to a powerful fishery whose disappearance brings private investigator Rapp, played by Reid, to the fictional coastal town of Whittock. Moss plays Katherine Yaga, a university professor, while Backo plays local detective Carson.
Yaga made its world premiere at TIFF on Sept. 17, the same day as Williams’s Making Waves conversation, and premieres Oct. 23 on Crave.
Williams is already back at work as Shane as audiences prepare to see him as Henry. Finding Shane again took a moment, but Williams said the familiarity of the production helped, from Tierney’s approach to the crew around him.
“It came back, thankfully,” Williams said.
