Have you heard the good word? Connor Storrie just earned his first Emmy nomination in the Best Guest Actor in a Comedy category, for his Saturday Night Live hosting gig back in February. And he absolutely deserves that nomination and then some, for hosting one of the best SNL episodes of the season. (Honestly, the sketch where he played a stripper who’d been hit by a car—inspired by his own original character from his days as a professional clown—deserves it’s own Emmy category.)
But as Heated Rivalry fans are well aware, neither Storrie nor his co-star Hudson Williams were eligible for the 2026 Emmy awards—despite the fact that Heated Rivalry was arguably the TV biggest show of the year—because shows financed outside of the U.S. are not eligible for the Primetime Emmy Awards. It’s a tough break for this small Canadian show that exploded in popularity earlier this year, and an even tougher break for Storrie and Williams, who went from unknowns to Hollywood’s hottest stars in a matter of weeks.
It’s especially tough because, as fans of the show know, Storrie and Williams are so much more than just pretty faces. They put their heart, souls, and yes, exceptionally toned bodies into playing Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander, fictional professional hockey rivals who fall into a passionate, secret love affair. Yes, the show featured a lot of spicy sex scenes. But fans fell in love with Ilya and Shane because Storrie and Williams made these characters feel so real. Williams, at least, took home a well-deserved win for best lead performer at the 2026 Canadian Screen Awards in May, but Storrie, as an American, wasn’t eligible.
And Storrie, a 26-year-old actor from Texas who didn’t know a word of Russian before production, deserves particular praise for heart-breaking Episode 5 monologue, delivered in what sounds like fluent Russian.
Like Storrie, I don’t speak Russian, but I do follow Russian fans of the series on social media, and I believe them when they say Storrie’s pronunciation and word choices were near-flawless. This technical accuracy didn’t come at the expense of emotion, either. You better believe I started crying when Ilya admits to Shane that he’s in love with him, and doesn’t know what to do about it. I mean, the pause before he delivers that heart-wrenching blow? If that’s not Emmy-worthy, I don’t know what is.
Like I said, Storrie deserves this Emmy nomination for SNL, and he deserves to win. As a first-time host recently thrust into the spotlight, he crushed it. But I’m still not over the injustice of the fact this little Canadian show that could took over Hollywood, against all odds, because every single person who worked on the show brought their A-game. So I’m just going to go ahead and pretend this one-and-only Heated Rivalry-related Emmy nom is for that monologue. Justice for this Emmy-quality, Canadian-funded media.