12 'Sexy Hot' Photos of Hudson Williams: Why Heated Rivalry Star is 'Actively Avoiding' Connor Storrie

The first thing you notice in the new Wonderland shoot isn't the styling or the water or even the abs. It's the look on Hudson Williams' face — half aware of the hysteria around him, half quietly amused by it. For the 23‑year‑old Canadian who went from relative unknown to global obsession on Heated Rivalry, the photos are thirsty fan-bait. The interview wrapped around them is something sharper: a young actor, mid-explosion, trying very hard not to become a brand.

Williams, who plays golden-boy hockey star Shane Hollander in Crave's improbably huge queer romance Heated Rivalry, has had his life turned inside out by those sex scenes with co‑star Connor Storrie (Ilya Rozanov). Overnight, the pair became the internet's favourite double act, a fan-fiction engine with agents. The surprise, in Wonderland's Spring 2026 cover story, is just how determined Williams is not to turn that chemistry into a business model.

Why The Heated Rivalry Star Says No To A Connor Storrie Double Act

Pressed about his relationship with Storrie, Williams is disarmingly blunt. 'Connor and I are aligned. 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,' he tells Wonderland. 'As much as we love each other, our friendship doesn't need to be public.'

It's a rare thing in the age of shared Notes app statements and matching Met Gala looks: two actors at the centre of a wildly popular romance actively refusing to monetise their friendship. Williams quotes Heated Rivalryshowrunner Jacob Tierney's neat summing‑up: 'Shane and Ilya are for the public. Connor and Hudson are for themselves.'

Fans might fantasise about spotting them on every front row together, but the actors have drawn a line. '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,' Williams explains.

The strategy is almost comically practical. 'I FaceTime him whenever I'm free,' he says. '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."'

There's something quietly radical about that stubbornness. In a business that happily chews up on‑screen couples and spits out joint endorsements, Williams is trying to protect something old‑fashioned: a private friendship that doesn't need to live on Instagram to exist.

Runways, 'Face Card' Insults And The Hudson Williams Version Of Fame

The Wonderland spread, shot by photographer Davis Bates and styled by Lily Bling, arrives on the heels of Williams' runway debut for Dsquared2 — a moment Heated Rivalry fans cheered and the fashion internet promptly tore to shreds.

'Some people were like, "Face card, no walk card." I had so much salt,' he laughs. He admits he approached it like a high‑fashion robot: 'I was trying to [channel] models who do high fashion, the stiff, robot walk. But then Dsquared2 is a fun show where you're meant to swag it up. And I was like, I could have swagged it up. I could have walked with umph.'

There's no tortured spin, just a young star clocking, in real time, how quickly the crowd that crowns you can also meme you to death. Instead of retreating, he leans into the absurdity of it, telling stories about smoking in the back with models Abby Champion, Yasmin Wijnaldum, Kit Butler and Alex Consani after the show. 'They were fun as hell. We were smoking cigs in the back,' he recalls, sounding exactly like someone who's slightly stunned to have been let into the club.

The self‑awareness surfaces again when he's asked about the most bizarre rumour he's heard. 'There was a Letterboxd scandal. Have you heard about this?' he says, before explaining that 'so fucking many Letterboxd reviews' of his are fake. 'I've seen one real Letterboxd review, and maybe like 25 fake ones.' Even his film taste has become contested territory.

Hudson Williams, Off‑Screen: Vancouver, Journals And Joan Didion

Perhaps the most striking angle in this Heated Rivalry star's Wonderland profile is how insistently un‑Shane he wants to be. Asked if he's anything like the character that made him famous, Williams pushes back. 'No, I'm not,' he says, almost reflexively.

He admits he can 'find the parties' and 'the crazy people in Vancouver', but that's not really the point. 'I like that the city isn't all, "Who are you with? What are you doing next?" I love LA too much. If I lived there, I'd become an insufferable LA stereotype,' he says. Vancouver, by contrast, lets him 'read books, watch movies' and 'absorb art before I have to expend it'.

It is a quietly savage read of Hollywood's echo chamber. 'In LA, people can confuse themselves into thinking they're artists just because they're around other creative people. You need hobbies. You need to be doing things that aren't just talking about art.'

For Williams, that means writing. A lot. He keeps two physical journals, plus a sprawling Google Doc of interior monologue. 'One is a manuscript — semi‑autobiographical — about this period in my life, where I blur the lines between fiction and real life. Then I have one where I just recount things: I met this person today, this happened,' he explains. The Doc is for hotel rooms, the in‑between hours, 'writing down what I'm thinking and feeling in hotel rooms between events.'

He lights up talking about it. 'It's really fun to write,' he says, citing Joan Didion as his north star. She journaled, he notes, 'so that when she gets really old, she can pick up her books and find her way back to herself again. That inspired me.' The practice isn't just about memory; it's about perspective. 'It also helps with gratitude. I can look back and go, 'Wow, that really blew me away.''

For all the obsessive fandom, Williams keeps circling back to the people who knew him before any of this. 'They're like, "Okay, good for you. This is amazing. But what's your next role?" Or, "Are you treating us well? Are you treating the people around you well?"' he says.

'That's make or break,' he adds. 'How you show up as a person matters more than anything else. I use my friends and family as a metric. Am I being an asshole? Let's make sure I'm staying kind.'

It is an oddly grounded manifesto for someone currently 'wetter than ever' on a magazine cover. Between the Dsquared2 memes, the Letterboxd fakes and the Connor‑and‑Hudson truthers, Williams seems to have decided that the only thing he can control is how he behaves when the cameras go away — and who, exactly, he refuses to turn into content.