Heated Rivalry actors Hudson Williams (Shane Hollander) and Connor Storrie (Ilya Rozanov) have had an incredible person by their side while navigating the press cycle of this new Crave original series streaming on HBO Max for U.S. fans: The showrunner of the TV series himself, Jacob Tierney, who created this TV adaptation based on Rachel Reid's series of Game Changers novels, and has been shutting down certain questions and speculations about the actors' sexualities outside of the characters they're playing.While Williams and Storrie have had plenty of fun in recent interviews, a few others have been a bit harder to navigate as they involved personal topics like sex, sexual orientations, and the concept of straight-identifying actors playing queer roles overall.It's been even trickier for the two lead actors of Heated Rivalry considering the very sexual relationship between Shane and Ilya. Thankfully, Tierney was ready and willing to shield the actors from questions that were perhaps a bit inappropriate, or just more invasive than the average.Most notably, Tierney has gone viral for intervening on a question asked to Storrie about whether he felt the "need to talk about your personal lives in relation to this project" given that an over-arching theme in Heated Rivalry is being closeted and facing the consequences of hiding who you really are. Connor Storrie, Jacob Tierney, Hudson Williams in a promo interview video on Crave's YouTube channel.YouTube (@CraveCanada)Tierney, seemingly without missing a beat, started answering the question addressed to Storrie. "I'll answer this for them. I don't think there's any reason to get into that stuff," he told Xtra. "I'll tell you something about the casting of both of these roles. You can't ask questions like that when you're casting, right? It's actually against the law. So what you have to gauge is somebody's enthusiasm and willingness to do the work."The Heated Rivalry showrunner continued, "And that's what's so impressive about both of these guys, they came into this being like, 'Yeah, we're here to do this, and we are here to make this story feel authentic and to be as real as possible.' And they fucking hit it out of the park." See on Instagram That response has received a flood of positive reactions from fans who believe that speculating over actors' sexual orientations just because they're playing queer characters is an invasion of privacy and puts pressure on them to come out before they feel ready, or generally comment on personal matters.Perhaps the biggest example in the last few years came from Heartstopper star Kit Connor, who came out in October 2022 with an X post (then tweet) that reads, "Back for a minute. I'm bi. Congrats for forcing an 18-year-old to out himself. I think some of you missed the point of the show. Bye."As a result, Tierney has received tons of praise for standing up on behalf of Williams and Storrie not only as the showrunner of Heated Rivalry, but also as an out gay man himself who understands how tricky and invasive these questions can be.X user @biconbuckley wrote, "Jacob fielding a question about actor's sexualities in casting gay roles that was aimed at Connor oh my God Jacob Tierney protecting your actors I fucking love you." (@) Another X user, @TunisCarla, wrote:"I'm ngl it rly bothers me that we still make this a conversation after years of watching what happens to actors who're accused of queerbaiting. I don't think it should be a conflict at all, and I genuinely never want to see it come up in another interview? It's getting stupid atp." (@) As other X users tried to start a speculation of their own, Heated Rivalry fans stood their ground and some of them even responded using Tierney's interview answer."Ffs. This was these actors' jobs," @BevWrayGreen replied to a speculative X post. "Were they believable? Delivered a great performance? That is ALL we need to care about. This was Jacob Tierneys response to such a question being asked in an interview." (@) "The concept of being upset over someone's sexuality," @ilyarozanovv wrote on X. (@) X user @ulises_v714 quote-posted, "Let's not be weird now and also this is what the director said about that." (@) Heated Rivalry drops new episodes every Friday on HBO Max.