This article contains affiliate links; if you click such a link and make a purchase, we may earn a commission.Hudson Williams Asks Fans to Stop Shipping Him and Connor Storrie IRL: ‘RPFing Gotta Stop Y’all’

Aimée Lutkin, Alyssa BaileyFri, May 8, 2026 at 5:17 PM UTC

0

"Hearst Magazines and AOL may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links."

Heated Rivalry’s Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams became best friends offscreen while making the hit series.

The two actors have spoken in interviews about their closeness, with Storrie telling W, “Hudson is my best friend, and I literally can’t fathom doing this without him.”

Williams was just as open about how deeply he appreciates his co-star, telling Variety, “We just love each other very dearly.”

HBO Max and Crave’s Heated Rivalry has quickly become one of the most-discussed series of the year, catapulting its stars Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams into the celebrity stratosphere. The two actors portray hockey players Shane Hollander (Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Storrie), who have a secret love affair spanning almost a decade. The series is known for its spicy intimate scenes as well as its beautiful depiction of romantic yearning.

Storrie and Williams have been open in interviews about their experience creating the show, along with their offscreen relationship as they navigate sudden fame together.

“Hudson is my best friend, and I literally can’t fathom doing this without him,” Storrie told W magazine in December. “We were both in similar places in life before this. We quit our jobs within a day of each other. We booked this and flew out the same day. Now it’s turning into two people who are being seen internationally for the first time. This has been the highlight of my life, and meeting Hudson makes that 10 times sweeter.”

Here, everything the two actors have shared about their friendship.

They are best friends (and not dating).

Fans of the show tend to “ship” Williams and Storrie, hoping they end up dating in real life. Storrie addressed this head-on in an interview with Vulture, saying things are strictly platonic.

When asked about the intimate scenes they shot in the show, Storrie said, “For me, it doesn’t feel spicy at all—like, that’s me and my best friend. This is the first time in my life I’m having this many eyes on me. They’ve seen me naked, they’ve seen me kiss, they’ve seen me be in love with a man on-screen—it’s only normal for people to try to transfer that over to mine and Hudson’s real life.” He explained that he intends to keep his private life private, adding, “I feel honored to be able to bring someone to life that so many people feel seen, understood, and represented by, and I think that transcends whoever I’m sleeping with in my real life.”

Williams expressed a similar sentiment to Deadline, saying, “I want queer people telling queer stories, but also, there’s the element of Connor and I—we’re best friends, and we love expressing that physically. You see people who infer or assume, and you kind of have to let that go. But then again, I never wanna stop expressing the love I have for Connor physically, and I’m never really going to, and I think multiple things can be true at once.”

Williams and Storrie purposely attend different events to help keep their friendship private.

Sophie Nélisse, who plays Heated Rivalry’s Rose Landry, interviewed Williams for Wonderland magazine in January 2026 and asked him how he and Storrie balance promoting the show with forging their own identities. Williams admitted that they purposely go to different events, in part to keep their friendship more private and their brands separate.

“It’s been really nice, because Connor and I are aligned,” Williams began. “We want to be different artists. We don’t want to be the Olsen twins. We want to be Connor and Hudson, with different filmographies and different deals. As much as we love each other, our friendship doesn’t need to be public. Jacob [Tierney] has that quote: ‘Shane and Ilya are for the public. Connor and Hudson are for themselves.’ And that’s how we feel. People want to see us front row together all the time, but we actively avoid that, because it starts to feel like branding. If you’re always seen together, you become attached at the hip. I FaceTime him whenever I’m free. But if we’re offered the same fashion shows, we’re like, ‘Which one are you going to? Okay, I’ll go to a different one.’ We’re stubborn, selfish artists who want to be our own people. We’re like, ‘I love you. I don’t want to do everything with you.’”

They’ve complimented each other’s physiques.

Both Williams and Storrie got into great shape for the show. In a profile with GQ in December 2025, Williams talked about meeting his co-star and being intimidated by his build.

“Connor pushed himself up onto the island in the kitchen,” Williams said. “I remember seeing his arms. They were the size of my legs. I was like, Holy fuck.”

“It’s not true,” Storrie responded. “Because you have crazy legs.”

The show’s creator, Jacob Tierney, also commented on their affection for one another in the piece, saying, “They’re living through a thing right now that is bananas—absolutely fucking bananas—and they’re handling it with grace, with humor, with generosity. They adore each other, which is like, thank fucking God.”

While discussing his own workout routine with Men’s Healthin January, Williams had a playful quip about Storrie’s physique: “I’m okay talking about my butt, but poor Connor Storrie—who has the fattest butt I’ve ever seen on a man—I’m sure just wants to stop talking about his beautiful cheeks.”

They joked about being “freaks” at their wrap party.

In a December interview with Entertainment Weekly, the friends discussed a viral video from the Heated Rivalry wrap party where they are rolling around on the floor together.

“Very plainly spoken, me and Hudson are freaks,” Storrie explained. “We’re clowns. We just love to riff and have fun and go crazy, and those were two situations where we were caught off guard doing our thing. The wrap party, that was all improvised. I think we were just putting on a show.”

Advertisement

Williams added, “Also, there might be something else, I think, with—we’re both very physical actors, and movement is a huge part of it.”

They lived next door to each other while shooting the show.

During his Vulture interview, Storrie spoke about moving into an apartment next to Williams’s while filming in Toronto.

“We would literally just go to set, go home, cook, work out together, and geek out over how excited we were to finally be working on this level,” he said. “If we were any less close, we probably would’ve gotten annoyed with each other really quick.”

Storrie spoke about how he and Williams were handling their press tour—and their decision to “play up” their chemistry.

The American actor told Vulture that they leaned into their chemistry while promoting Heated Rivalry’s first season. “If Hudson says something jokingly, like, ‘Spit in my mouth,’ I think that gives everyone else the go-ahead to get in on that too,” he said. “People are ruthless talking about our holes and our butts.”

During his discussion with Interview, Storrie added that spending time with Williams has helped ground them both during their press tour. “Hudson’s been in town, so we’ll have some quality time and come back down to ground zero,” he said. “It’s funny, because all the press and stuff is getting easier and easier and easier. You would think you would get burnt out and exhausted. Even though it’s only been three weeks of doing press for this, I’m clicking into an interesting sort of confidence and appreciation for all of this.”

Williams, meanwhile, credited Storrie for helping him keep the press tour fun during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “I have one of my best friends for life right beside me through it all, which is already a luxury that a lot of actors don’t get,” he said. “I’m sure I would’ve probably had a smaller appetite for the amount of stuff we’re doing if I didn’t have him through this. I’m an omnivert, leaning more to an extrovert, but I still get—I have ADHD, I’m unmedicated, currently, for the last while, so my social battery can just tap [out] pretty quick. At the end of the day, I’m pretty forgiving with myself if I’m talking with a reporter in a polite, more boring way. Then when I’ve had coffee, and I’ve had a nap, I let myself be chaotic. I let myself off the leash. I try to say, whatever mood I’m in, just be Canadian, don’t be mean. Whatever they get, they get.”

Storrie and Williams together at Vanity Fair and Amazon’s awards season event on Jan. 10, 2026.Stefanie Keenan - Getty Images (Stefanie Keenan - Getty Images)Both Williams and Storrie are vocal fans of each other’s acting.

Timid magazine asked Williams how Storrie’s acting has helped him be a better performer. Williams responded, “He’s so incredibly present and so incredibly truthful. As an actor, it’s so much easier to think of what you should be doing or what you think would be an entertaining version of this or the most dramatic version or make sure you're hitting these lines properly or doing the scene properly or the director wants this and the script says this. But just to actually listen to the person and let what they’re saying affect you—Connor is so good at that. There’s so many moments where I am saying something and the script says he does this, and he does something so unexpectedly emotional or so unexpectedly vulnerable that even if I'm very robotic and going through a scene, he can crack me and change my trajectory in the scene. He’s a huge resource in affecting me and that makes my job way easier because I don’t have to. He makes me be present. He’s so good at that. That’s his superpower.”

Storrie, meanwhile, credited Williams for helping him understand Ilya so quickly in his Interview story. “I feel like I got the character pretty instantly,” he began. “I believed in his circumstances without almost any effort, and I just trusted Hudson so much. It’s so easy to act when you know where you’re coming from and you believe the person opposite you. I mean, I’m so gooey. I’m such a romantic. So any of the really heightened emotional moments—their love or confession or an outbreak or a fight—those are the moments that I really enjoy as an actor.”

They have several nicknames for each other and got matching tattoos.

Williams listed out all the nicknames he and Storrie have for each other during his Timid magazine interview. “He calls me Huddy, Papi, Bubba, Baby,” he said. “I call him Pookie. I used to call him Pookie a lot. Papi. Oh, Con Con. I call him that both in text form and verbally. But yeah, a lot of nicknames.”

GQrevealed that when the series wrapped, they got matching tattoos that read “SEX SELLS.”

Williams said creating the show helped him become more comfortable with expressing himself physically, and that he and Storrie have exchanged “big spooning hugs.”

The Canadian star revealed that he stayed at Storrie’s Los Angeles apartment when he came to the U.S. to do some press. “We were like, ‘Oh, my God, if people saw us just getting ready in the morning, giving each other big spooning hugs, just to say we’re proud of each other,’ people would be going crazy,” he told Variety. “If only one fan had access, God forbid. But yeah, we just love each other very dearly.”

The outlet asked him what creating Heated Rivalry taught him. Williams responded, “I think I had my own biases, maybe that would be too strong of a word, but my own discomfort if I expressed myself fully, physically and affectionately, both with women and men. It would feel inappropriate. I realized if you really do love someone—platonically or not—I’m such a tactile, sensory person. There are so many taboos. It’s much harder on men. I had to let that go, and I got to learn how freeing that is. That also went hand-in-hand with being myself, truly as an artist. Connor was also a great person to have at my side. I think we both opened each other up to just be freer, more fully expressive.”

Williams and Storrie FaceTime each other regularly.

During Williams’s January 2026 appearance on Andy Cohen Live, he revealed that Storrie is an “awful texter,” but they largely keep in touch with frequent video calls. “We'll Facetime each other or call each other randomly, very consistently,” he told the host. “That has sort of been my stability, especially through this. Just having my best friend who is in the same position I am.”

Williams is fiercely protective over Storrie.

In a November 2025 interview with The Permanent Rain Press, Williams said he would pitch Storrie as “a beautiful little, sensitive little radical, artist boy. Who should be treated with the utmost care and hugs and friendliness because he can’t handle anything else. And that’s perfect. And that’s the way he should be treated.”

He added, “And anyone who doesn’t treat him that way should die.”

Williams asked fans to stop shipping him and Storrie in real life after the 2026 Met Gala.

In May 2026, Williams and Storrie made their Met Gala debut. They took a bathroom selfie together, which Williams later posted to his Threads account.

Instagram (Instagram)

The photo led some fans to hype the pair up as a real-life romantic couple. Williams asked them to just ship their fictional characters, writing, “Rpfing [real person fiction] gotta stop y’all.”

Threads (Threads)

You Might Also Like

Here’s What 40 Celebrities Looked Like as Teenagers

Is Collagen Banking the Answer to Younger-Looking Skin?

Trust Us—These Editor-Approved Fragrances Will Have You Smelling Like a Dream

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Entertainment”