On Sunday, to present the Golden Globe for best female actor in a supporting role on television, the event’s organizers tapped two actors — Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie — who until about two months ago were widely unknown.
But when the actors, who play romantically involved hockey players in the HBO Max show “Heated Rivalry,” walked onto the stage, they were met with loud applause and cheers.
After Mr. Storrie, in a nod to the show’s steamier scenes, alluded to the fact that everyone in the room had probably seen the two men naked, Mr. Williams asked: “You think everyone in the audience has seen ‘Heated Rivalry?’”
The crowd cheered again.
“That’s a maybe,” Mr. Storrie said. “But their trainers have, their moms have, their daughters have …” he added.
That Mr. Williams, 24, and Mr. Storrie, 25, the stars of a show that started streaming on Nov. 28, had weeks later been catapulted into one of the entertainment industry’s most prominent spotlights is a reflection of their — and their show’s — rapid and unexpected ascent into mainstream popular culture.
In addition to presenting at the Golden Globes, the chiseled actors have appeared on the late-night circuit, on podcasts and on magazine covers. And seemingly everywhere they go, they have been greeted by a breathless gaggle of both ordinary and celebrity fans. The actors’ penchant for drawing crowds came up at the Globes on Sunday: As they were introduced, a joke was made about how the duo needed extra security for their appearance.
Directed and written by Jacob Tierney, “Heated Rivalry,” which is based on a romance novel of the same name by Rachel Reid, was produced by a Canadian network, Crave. The show centers on the hockey players Shane Hollander (Mr. Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Mr. Storrie), who develop a closeted rivals-to-lovers gay romance.
Early episodes of the show are filled to the brim with nudity and unfiltered sex scenes, but later ones delve into the challenges of first-time relationships and coming out of the closet, which is almost always challenging for young people — and can be even more so for those who are professional athletes with a public presence.
HBO Max licensed “Heated Rivalry” just a couple of weeks before it was scheduled to debut in Canada, and the streamer barely promoted the series before airing it globally. It has since soared to the top of HBO Max’s streaming charts, and has become the most-watched original series produced by Crave. An HBO Max executive described “Heated Rivalry” as a “word-of-mouth sensation,” and a second season is now in the works. On Monday, Ms. Reid announced she would be publishing a new novel later this year centered around Shane and Ilya.
The show’s word-of-mouth success, perhaps not surprisingly, is owed largely to the internet. Across social media, members of a broad, colorful fan base — which includes, but is not limited to, hockey followers, pop-culture fanatics and romance-book readers — post recipes for a tuna melt sandwich that Shane and Ilya eat, or eagerly discuss scenes to unearth Easter eggs and overlooked details. Straight fans have proclaimed the show their “gay awakening.”
Chantal Strasburger, founder of Read Receipts, an embroidery business that specializes in turning memes and cultural moments into merchandise, said in an email that she “started getting heavily lobbied” on social media to create “Heated Rivalry” merch soon after the show started streaming.
“I think the Venn diagram of ‘Heated Rivalry’ fans consists of gay men who want much-needed representation of queer joy and women who want well-produced romances about yearning,” she added. “These two circles overlap in the enjoyment of hot people having hot sex.”
It isn’t lost on the actors that their physical appearance is a large part of their sudden popularity. Mr. Storrie, at an event in Los Angeles this month, thanked fans for “tweeting about our butts.” And he and Mr. Williams have talked about how, after seeing the show’s snowballing popularity, they got matching tattoos of the words “sex sells.”
The show’s wide appeal might also be because of the way its muscular, testosterone-fueled characters challenge a narrow idea of masculinity by showcasing emotional vulnerability and romance within the hyper-macho world of professional hockey, said Blakely Thornton, a content creator.
Mr. Thornton, who regularly posts about popular culture and is a host of the culture podcast “The Yestergays,” said he was a closeted athlete himself while playing football for the University of Pennsylvania. For him, “Heated Rivalry” quickly went from being “enjoyable, gay smut,” as he put it in an interview, to something far more personal.
“When you see yourself, specifically, a man, doing something so masculine and then being open with who he loves,” he said, continuing: “When I say I was ugly crying … My body wasn’t really ready for it. ”
That “Heated Rivalry” viewers include seasoned hockey enthusiasts is owed largely to the fact that the creators of both the show and its eponymous book are fans of the sport. As a result, it is depicted fairly accurately, Pete Blackburn, a host of the niche, hockey-focused podcast “What Chaos!,” said in an interview.
When “Heated Rivalry” started streaming in November, Mr. Blackburn, described by one of his followers as “painfully straight,” and his equally straight co-host DJ Bean decided to dedicate a segment of their podcast to discussing its episodes.
“It was brought to us by our audience,” Mr. Bean said. “They were like, ‘There’s a gay hockey show, are you going to talk about it?’”
In the weeks since, their listeners have expanded to include people who have never watched a real hockey game and do not understand the rules of the sport. They managed to get Mr. Tierney on their podcast, and clips of its “Heated Rivalry” segments have unexpectedly become some of the most popular videos on their YouTube channel.
“We were interested in it because it just aligns with all of our interests, and we covered it in the way that we would cover anything else,” Mr. Blackburn said. “And it has just blown up like crazy — it’s very hard to wrap my mind around any of that.”
What is often overlooked amid the hype surrounding “Heated Rivalry” is that, to date, there have been no active openly gay players in the National Hockey League.
Mr. Wiliams, speaking in a radio interview, said he has received private messages from active athletes across different sports who remain closeted and who feel seen by the show. His remarks also came up at the Golden Globes, where they were referenced by the show’s host, the comedian Nikki Glaser.
“Stories like these don’t always get told,” she said. Then she deadpanned: “I hope that the success of ‘Heated Rivalry’ is proof that American audiences are ready for more shows about hockey.”
Alisha Haridasani Gupta is a Times reporter covering women’s health and health inequities.
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