"Heated Rivalry" breakout stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie were selected for the Olympic torch relay, ahead of next month's Milan Cortina Games, the show's streaming platform announced Thursday.
Williams and Storrie play Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov — closeted ice hockey stars carrying on a torrid, secret romance — on the hit HBO Max show.
"HBO Max today announced that Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, stars of the Crave Original series HEATED RIVALRY, have been selected to take part in the Olympic Torch Relay as official torchbearers for the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026," according to an HBO Max statement.
“Heated Rivalry,” based on books by romance writer Rachel Reid, has been one of the 2025-26 television season’s most surprising hits.
The network did not disclose when or where Williams and Storrie would carry the torch. The torch was in Trieste on Thursday and set to go through Udine on Friday.
The actors will hoist the torch at some point between Thursday and the opening ceremony, set for Feb. 6, though a handful of competitions — curling, luge and skiing — start two days earlier.
The first men’s ice hockey games are set for Feb. 11. The following day, Team USA opens against Latvia.
Latvia, a nation of less than 2 million residents, consistently punches above its hockey weight, with a No. 10 world ranking and five skaters and two goaltenders in today's NHL.
Latvia's reputation even earned the team admiration from "Heated Rivalry" writers who inked a Latvian upset over Rozanov’s Team Russia in the show's alternate reality of the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
HBO Max picked up U.S. rights to the hockey romance in late November, sending the previously little-known show, and its actors, into spaces no one could have imagined.
"I knew it was going to be something. I did not know it was going to be HBO," Storrie told NBC's "TODAY" show last week. "I think HBO was kind of like a pie-in-the-sky moment for all of us. HBO is so prestigious, and I think it’s a really good platform for this, but, you know, nothing’s promised."
