Heated Rivalry breakout Connor Storrie made his late night television debut Monday night with an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers.
The 25-year-old actor — in the midst of a meteoric rise alongside co-star Hudson Williams following the release of the Canadian queer hockey series — sat down for a chat with Meyers about the whirlwind of the last month and change. He started his appearance by taking it all in, smiling out at the cheering audience.
Just last night, Storrie was in Beverly Hills at the 2026 Golden Globes, managing to become the talk of the town despite not even being nominated at the awards show. He told Meyers, who commented about the actor’s quick turnaround to make the show, that he left the Globes around 8 p.m., went to the Chateau Marmont for about 30 minutes to attend an after party (which included snapping a photo with Parker Posey) and then rushed off to catch a flight.
As he has noted in previous interviews, Storrie spoke with Meyers about the wide appeal of the show and the queer romance genre in general. “You think of male romance, you think it’s for gay men but there’s been all walks of life, predominately women, who enjoy it,” he said, smiling out at the cheering audience.
Storrie told Meyers that the “jock-ness” of his role was the “craziest” part of the series. Meyers joked that the camera will cut away from different parts of the show — the hockey and the sex (or the “other thing,” as Meyers put it). “I do the other thing. I don’t do the skating,” Storrie joked.
“I’m going to be honest with you. I thought I was doing good and then recently one of our costume designers Hanna posted BTS of me skating,” Storrie recalled when asked if he felt better about his skating abilities. “I watched it and I was like, ‘Oh, boy. I don’t deserve any accolades for this.”
Meyers also spoke with Storrie about the exposure the show has given him. The actor reiterated how grateful he was for the experience, sharing he had been a waiter before he took the role. “If Heated Rivalry didn’t go this well, I was already planning on getting a new job in a few months,” he admitted.
“To be able to act and get paid to do what I want to do and have enough money to film my own things, it’s insane for me,” he said. His “own things” is likely a reference to his directorial debut, which he’s been enthusiastically sharing about during Heated Rivalry’s press tour.
The show had teased the interview with a parody of the show, showing Meyers trying to convince Storrie to come on Late Night and ending with a riff on Storrie’s now-iconic cottage line. “I’m coming to Late Night,” Storrie said in his character Ilya’s Russian accent.
The excitement for Storrie on Late Night began well before the actor spoke with Meyers. A large crowd gathered in front of NBC’s 30 Rockefeller Center to get a peek at the actor arriving for his taping. It was a similar scene last week when Williams made his late night debut on The Tonight Show.
Heated Rivalry, hailing from Canadian streamer Crave and airing on HBO Max in the U.S., was created for television by Letterkenny alum Jacob Tierney and centers around a fictional hockey universe based on books by Rachel Reid. The show focuses on two rival professional players — Canada-born Shane Hollander (Williams) of the fictitious Montreal Metros and Russia-born Ilya Rozanov (Storrie) of the fictitious Boston Raiders — as they navigate a near-decade-long situationship turned (spoiler alert) relationship over the entirety of their Major League Hockey careers.
Crave renewed Heated Rivalry for a second season and HBO Max confirmed it will continue to air the series. Tierney, who wrote and directed the show’s entire first season, has confirmed that he’ll return to direct the series, but told THR ahead of Heated Rivalry’s finale that he was considering the possibility “that other writers will come in to help” him out, but that he wasn’t sure yet.
