It’s been a whirlwind few months in the pop culture world since Heated Rivalry — Crave and HBO Max’s steamy gay hockey romance starring Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie — burst onto the scene.
While much of the response to the show based on author Rachel Reid’s Game Changers series has been positive, there’s inevitably been a downside to the fervor surrounding it. On Monday evening, two of the show’s central cast members, Williams and François Arnaud, released a joint statement on Instagram addressing what they seem to allege has been ongoing online hate directed at those responsible for bringing Heated Rivalry to the screen.
“Don’t call yourself a fan if you share racist/homophobic/biphobic/misogynist/ageist/ableist/parasocial/bigoted comments of any kind,” the statement released on Instagram stories read. “None of us need your hateful ‘love.’”
The statement went on to say that the people working on the show “all respect and support and love each other and are on the same side” — perhaps in a nod to monthslong rumors about infighting among the cast. After initially being posted by Williams and Arnaud, the message was shared by series creator Jacob Tierney, Reid, and actors Ksenia Daniela Kharlamova, Nadine Bhabha, and Robbie Graham-Kuntz, who plays the love interest to Arnaud’s veteran hockey star. As of Tuesday morning, Storrie had not shared the statement on his account.
from popculturechat
Late Monday evening, commenters on the Reddit forum popculturechat responded to a screenshot of Williams’ and Arnaud’s side-by-side stories, framing viewers’ reactions to Heated Rivalry as “volatile” and drawing comparisons to the obsessive online fandom that once plagued the band One Direction.
One user wrote, “I feel like as an outsider this fandom has speed-ran every single toxic fandom behavior you can think of.”
Many of the key figures involved in the show have received unwanted attention from fans, who have been eager, at the very least, to learn details about the overnight sensations' personal lives. Williams, whose sexuality has been the subject of online discourse for months, has reportedly been the target of racially motivated social media campaigns that have heated up in recent weeks. But the effects of the show’s popularity haven’t just been felt by public figures: Last week, the Lawyers for Civil Rights Boston released an open letter expressing concern about what the group described as backlash fueling “heinous incidents” of LGBTQ+ hate directed at athletes in school-affiliated hockey programs.
