Hello, hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Fluently Forward. Today, we are talking about the hottest TV show that is on the tip of everyone's tongues and butts. It is hot, hot, hot, hot, and that is heated rivalry. This new TV show has taken everyone by storm. I feel like it's all anyone is talking about for a variety of reasons,

and I thought the timing was apt to dive into it. So in today's episode, I'll be giving my thoughts

on the show, but we're going to take it through a timeline sense. We're going to start by covering

the book that started the TV show Heated Rivalry. We will talk about how it was turned into a TV

show because a lot of how it was made is probably different than you would think when you just hear of this hot new HBO show.

It came from many meager beginnings.

We're also going to talk about the two leads of the show, Connor Story, who plays Ilya and Hudson Williams, who plays Shane in the TV show, some drama that has

happened since it came out because, I mean, I guess that's just what happens when you put out

something that's so popular. And then we're going to talk at the end about bearding in Hollywood.

I just think it's really interesting because obviously this is a TV show about two gay hockey players

who are closeted

and in this secret relationship and what happens. And when most people talk about bearding on,

I don't know, like Reddit or podcasts or TikTok comments, I feel like the notion of it is kind of

twisted a lot. It seems to be a seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo type of sign on the dotted

line and there's a contract in place and this bearding is so official. But we have a lot of

stories about bearding that are true to form, whether it's from Neil Patrick Harris, which

we'll be talking about. I thought particularly about his story when I was watching

heated rivalry, whether it was Freddie Mercury with Queen or all of these other stories. So I just

want to highlight that at the end because I think a lot of people have this kind of Hollywood

idea of what bearding is. And we can learn from actual people in Hollywood who have spoken

about their experiences and see how accurately it lines up with everything that happened in heated rivalry.

So we're going to get into the episode. One thing that I want to say before we start the episode, I'll take my sunglasses off for this. I have developed an I twitch this week, which is why I have them on. I feel really weird talking about anything like light or fun or juicy

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