Heated rivalry‘s Hudson Williams defended her father after making some shocking revelations about how her father was “very irresponsible”.
During an interview with Men’s Healththat was published on Thursday, January 15, Williams, 24, recalled that his father tried to get him to train with weights at the age of 6.
“My dad always kept me in the gym since I was 6 years old,” the actor noted. “There are videos of him trying to put weights in my hand, which seems very irresponsible.”
Williams had mixed opinions about the decisions his father made growing up, adding, “But he’s also the guy who left me alone with lighters and, like, plastic bottles. So it’s not out of character.”
Over the years, stars like Jennette McCurdy and Macaulay Culkin have talked about hitting rock bottom with their parents. Jennette opened up about the abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother, Debra McCurdy, in her memoir, I Am Glad My Mom Died. “Of course, there are times when I imagine that my mother would have apologized or that (…)
Despite the shocking admission, Williams said his father was a “great father” to him.
“I didn’t want to tarnish his character,” he added. “But yeah, I’ve been in the gym for a long time.”
Williams has offered a vision in his relationship with his father since he became a household name after the success of his Crave series, Heated Rivalry. He opened up about relating to his character Shane, who is autistic, due to similarities with his father.
Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams
Sabrina Lantos/HBO Max“After I read the scripts, even before the book, I immediately saw how it would work,” Williams told The Hollywood Reporter in December 2025. “My dad is on the spectrum, he knows. He’s a mechanical engineer, he graduated first in his class, first in everything, a very technical genius in many ways, but I think he would say socially with emotions.”
Williams continued: “He said to me, I’m not even paraphrasing, ‘I relate more to Vulcan than to humans,’ referring to Star Trek, the hyper-cerebral alien creatures. I love my dad to death and I’ve always felt very connected to him. He has a sensibility to him that’s very childlike. I think when I read the script, I said Rache had ended my life. (Shane) is autistic, so I think he knew how he should be, I empathized a lot with him, immediately.
based on Rachel Reid’s Game changers book series, Heated rivalry follows rival professional hockey players Shane Hollander (Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie), whose animosity on the ice is just a front for a secret – and very passionate – romance.
After the end of season 1, Heated rivalry became the highest-rated non-animated acquired series on HBO Max since its launch in 2020. It is also in the top five of all scripted debuts on HBO Max this year. Meanwhile, Crave has become the most-watched original show in Canada.
Heated rivalry it has since been renovated for a second season, with Williams and Storrie, 25, planning to reprise their roles.
“(For the role) the hockey players don’t usually look that fired up, and the rest of them are kind of loud, or they look like they’re drinking strong beer. But then I asked (creator) Jacob (Tierney), like, ‘How should it be? He said, ‘You should look like it’s pasta,'” Williams said Men’s Health about his physique for the show. “And I was like, ‘I don’t know. I’m watching these other guys on the show, and they look like underwear models.'”
She added: “And as soon as I saw Connor Storrie, I decided not to eat carbs and try to be as big as possible. I want to be bigger, juicier, thicker, I want to have bigger legs. I want to have big-ass shoulders. I want to put on 10 pounds of mass. Unless you’ve got skin and you’re muscular. I’m not going to eat.”