Hudson Williams spent Thursday at the Toronto International Film Festival confronting the strange reality of returning to Heated Rivalry after the series became a global phenomenon.
During TIFF’s “Making Waves With… Hudson Williams” conversation, Williams opened up about the difficulty of stepping back into Shane Hollander for Season 2, admitting that he and Connor Storrie were initially unsure whether they could simply slip back into their characters.
After Storrie began filming, Williams said he started questioning his own performance before even stepping onto the set.
When Williams eventually began filming, he encountered a similar uncertainty. “Am I doing a Shane impression?” Williams says of the first days of filming. “I was like, ‘Oh I’m losing you, I’m losing you.'”
Fortunately, the familiarity of the production helped settle him back into Shane. “It came back, thankfully,” he said.
Williams also described the experience as “surreal,” particularly because the cast and crew were returning to a world that had changed dramatically since Season 1. The first season's success, he explained, had made their memories of making the show inseparable from the enormous reaction that followed. “Our memory isn’t ours, it’s everyone’s,” Williams said.
The actor's TIFF appearance came as he also premiered Yaga, Crave’s supernatural mystery series, alongside Carrie-Anne Moss, Noah Reid and Clark Backo. Meanwhile, production on Heated Rivalry Season 2 is underway in Canada, with Williams and Storrie reprising their roles as Shane and Ilya. The new season is expected to arrive on Crave and HBO Max in 2027.
