EDITORIAL – Tournament Capital has a new star in actor Hudson Williams
Storrie (left) and Williams at the Golden Globes. (Image: Screenshot)
An editorial by Mel Rothenburger.
EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE somebody from Kamloops becomes a big star. Our latest is Hudson Williams, a 24-year-old who has shot to fame in a television series called Heated Rivalry.
Williams and his co-star Connor Storrie were on stage last night (Jan. 11, 2026) as presenters at the annual Golden Globes awards show for movies and television. This, after a couple of weeks of appearances on Jimmy Fallon (where he described the “intimacy garment” he wears for filming Heated Rivalry) and CNN, with CBC going ga-ga over the series on several interview and discussion shows.
Golden Globes host Nikki Glaser remarked that she hoped Heated Rivalry is a sign that “American audiences are ready for more shows about hockey.” It was a joke, of course, Heated Rivalry is only peripherally about hockey; more specifically, it’s about two gay hockey players falling in love.
Williams, in fact, doesn’t even play hockey in real life. And while Glaser’s remark was about “American audiences,” the series is a hundred per cent Canadian, created by Crave and picked up by HBO Max for international distribution. It now streams not only in Canada and the U.S. but also in the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, Spain and the Philippines.
It’s the most watched original series ever on Crave, and a top-rated series on Max. After its highly successful first season, it’s been renewed for a second.
At the Golden Globes, where Storrie and Williams presented the award for best female actor, they did a cute bit about trying to get over their nerves by imagining the audience naked. Vogue gushed that they “proved they’re here to stay.”
So where did this previously unknown Kamloops boy Williams come from? His mother is Korean, his dad of Dutch and British descent, and he went to school at Sa-Hali Secondary and started acting in Grade 11. Then he enrolled in acting courses at Langara college at the Coast and got a few small parts in various productions. He was waiting tables in New Westminster when the Heated Rivaly opportunity came up.
In an interview with GQ, he described Kamloops as “rednecks and bougie people who are always going to Vancouver to do some shopping.” Though maybe in need of a little elaboration, it’s not that bad a summary of the Tournament Capital style.
So, Kamloops has a new golden boy. A couple of years ago, our star was Cameron Whitcomb, a talented singer who came close to winning American Idol (he now has a deal with Atlantic Records). We’ve had many others in various walks of life. Hockey wise, Mark Recchi tops a list of Kamloops players who made it big in the NHL. And there’s Kelly Olynyk in basketball, Phil Gaglardi and Len Marchand in politics, novelist Steven Galloway and — as any history fan knows — Boris Karloff on stage and screen.
But now, it’s Hudson Williams. And, by the way, season two begins shooting this summer.
Mel Rothenburger is a former regular contributor to CFJC-TV and CBC radio, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, and a Webster Foundation Commentator of the Year finalist. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
“rednecks and bougie people who are always going to Vancouver to do some shopping.”
… wow … rough. But you can expect this from a young guy who hasn’t yet lived long enough to to see past such simple descriptions and see the rest of us out here.
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That was my first impression as well until I thought about it a little more and took it in a more positive light — the Kamloops economy being largely resource based and folks being working class, and then looked up bougie as “now primarily used as an informal, positive term for when, say, everyday people treat themselves to something a little nicer or fancier than usual.” Such as say, a nice outdoor skating pond? But there is, of course, much more to us than that, hence my caveat that his definition requires some elaboration. However, maybe I’m giving him too much benefit of the doubt?
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