'Heated Rivalry' Star Hudson Williams's Parents Are Successful in Their Own Fields

You might know Hudson Williams from the new hit steamy hockey romance, Heated Rivalry on HBO Max, but he's been honing his craft for some time. Before the series, he was in an episode of Tracker, the TV movie All I Need for Christmas, and a plethora of short films.

Hudson is a writer and director as well as an actor. He was interested in film and performance from an early age, according to IMDb.

Some fans of Heated Rivalry are wondering about the parents who shaped Hudson into the performer that he is today. Here's what we know.

Hudson's mom is an interior designer who now coordinates transportation on film sets like FX's Shogun, according to GQ. He told GQ that he took his mom with him to the Toronto premiere of Heated Rivalry.

He said, "Me and my mom are very sex positive ... She talks about her boyfriends. You know, I talk about my s--t."

Hudson's dad is a mechanical engineer. Hudson gushed about his accomplishments in an interview for The Hollywood Reporter. He said, "He’s a mechanical engineer, graduated top of his class, first in class in everything, very technical genius in a lot of ways."

He added that his dad is on the autism spectrum, which helped inform Hudson's role in the breakout series. "Socially… I think he would say that he doesn’t want to deal with emotions. He has told me, I’m not even paraphrasing, 'I relate more with Vulcan than human,'" Hudson joked.

He explained, "I think when I read the script, I took a huge page out of living my life with him. Rachel [Reid] has said [Shane] is autistic, so I think I knew how it should look. I empathized with him a lot, immediately."

He added, "I love my dad to death, and I’ve always felt very connected to him. He has a sensitivity to him that is very boyish."

Hudson's mom is Korean, and his dad is British-Dutch-Canadian, according to Pink News. Hudson grew up in Canada.

In the books, Hudson's character is Japanese-Canadian.

Hudson said that Korean and, more generally, Asian representation in media is important to him. "It meant a lot to me and my mom," he told The PR Press. "She always thought it would be harder for me to break into film and acting because she hadn't really seen [any leading actors of Asian descent]," he said.

"It's pretty new that Asians are leading film and TV here in North America. So then to land a role ... that necessitated being Asian" wasn't something his mom saw coming, Hudson said.

"That meant a lot," he concluded. Hudson told GQ, "I hope that little Asian kids are like, 'Ooh, I want to become an actor,'" after they see him on screen.