Heated Rivalry is the Prototype.

Hollywood Is Getting Destroyed By Shows That Cost Nothing. And they still don't get it.

One of my favorite auditions this year was for a series regular in a FX mockumentary from the creators of Reno 911. I had to submit one monologue and then improvise two direct to camera questions. I had a blast! If the show comes out, maybe I will post my tapes.

When I submitted it to my agent, she texted me this:

And then...we heard CRICKETS. When the cast was announced, I found out that it went to a professional WWE wrestler/actress with 5.5M followers on Instagram.

It stung but I wasn’t surprised. I mean given the despair emoji above, I knew it was a long shot. This is just what’s been happening to mid-level actors like me.
We are stuck. Or at least it seems that way.

And listen, I’ve done a pretty good job of re-framing rejection in a way that it doesn’t completely break my spirit anymore. It’s a business after all. I know that talent alone doesn’t make a career in Hollywood. Given the same level of talent, if someone can deliver an audience to your show—then it makes financial sense to choose the actor with more relevance and reach.

This is what Hollywood has become now.

A place where data points matter more than performances. Where "safe" A-lister choices have become so expensive that taking REAL risks feel financially irresponsible. Where we've convinced ourselves (or at least I have) that in this fragmented media landscape, breaking a new star is impossible.

And then Heated Rivalry entered the chat.

The Star-Making Machine We Thought Was Dead

There was a time when television did something magical: it broke stars. You’d tune into a show and discover someone—a complete unknown who grabbed you and refused to let go. Within a season, they’d be everywhere. Within two, they’d be carrying movies. It’s the career staircase we are all still chasing even though now it feels like it is the exception and not the rule.

The TV medium had this alchemy about it, this ability to take raw talent and introduce it to the world in a way that felt intimate and inevitable at the same time.

I really believed that those days were over. Especially after the brutal year 2025 has been for many of us.

The streaming era fragmented audiences into a thousand micro-niches. Social media created its own celebrity ecosystem where follower counts mattered more than craft. Studio executives started treating unknowns as liabilities rather than discoveries. Why take a chance on someone unproven when you could stack your cast with A-listers and use their names as insurance?

The logic seemed sound. But it really hasn’t delivered has it? Shows like The Four Seasons stacked with a celebrity cast came and went and not many people noticed.

And while Hollywood is drowning in debt and scaling back on productions, international markets are filling the gap and cracking the code of producing shows at a low cost that people actually want to see without star power draining their budgets.

The Gamble That Paid Off

Connor Storrie’s biggest credit before Heated Rivalry was an unnamed character in Joker: Folie à Deux. Young Inmate. He had 12 credits on IMDb and had never carried a show before. He was so far from being a “safe bet” that most algorithms wouldn’t have even served him up as an option to Hollywood execs.

But Canada took a chance on him anyway.

And because they took that chance, we got to witness one of the most emotionally devastating performances of the year. That scene where he delivers the Russian monologue in episode 5—I’ve watched it five times and it guts me every single time. The vulnerability. The precision. The accent work. He’s from Texas, by the way. His monologue is a masterclass. (I also love Hudson Williams but he is Canadian and I’m focusing on the state of American actors who can’t breakthrough—so don’t come for me!)

Had this show been pitched in the US—it would have never been greenlit without attaching someone like a Timothee Chalamet. The algorithm would have been satisfied. The culture would have been poorer for it.

Connor Storrie is our next Heath Ledger. And if Hollywood had been in charge, we would have never found him.

The Pattern Hollywood Keeps Refusing to See

This isn’t a fluke. This keeps happening, and we keep acting surprised.

Baby Reindeer: A limited series that cost a fraction of a typical Netflix prestige drama. No stars. A story so specific and strange that every traditional development meeting would have noted it to death. It became a cultural phenomenon that had everyone talking for months.

Squid Game: A Korean show with subtitles (death in the American market, according to conventional wisdom), a premise that seemed too dark, too violent, too weird. It became the most-watched show in Netflix history and launched a global conversation about inequality and human nature.

Now Heated Rivalry: A show that by all traditional Hollywood metrics shouldn’t work. And yet it’s achieved a cultural breakthrough that studios spending five times as much can’t seem to buy.

The Math That Studios Need to Figure Out

Let’s talk numbers.

Heated Rivalry: $3-5 million per episode
House of the Dragon: $20+ million per episode

What did that extra $15 million buy?
Instagram followers? A-list insurance? The comfort of knowing that if it fails, you can point to all the “right” decisions you made? Dragons, maybe?

What it didn’t buy: a CULTURAL breakthrough.

In Heated Rivalry‘s case, for a quarter of the cost: it has become a genuine cultural moment. Memes and fan edits. The kind of organic social media frenzy that studios spend millions trying to manufacture. And new stars in Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams that people will follow to whatever they does next.

More money does not equal more impact.

This is the math Hollywood refuses to do. Every dollar spent chasing “safety” is a dollar not spent on the kind of storytelling that actually breaks through. You can’t buy cultural relevance. You can’t reverse-engineer a breakthrough. You can’t data-analyze your way into mattering.

The Algorithm Would Have Killed This Show

You know what the data would have said about Heated Rivalry?

“Limited appeal. Niche subject matter. No star power. High risk.”

The algorithm would have been wrong.
The algorithm is always wrong about the things that really matter. It might be great at predicting patterns but humans are complex and break patterns of behavior all the time.

Hollywood has become so obsessed with eliminating risk that they’ve forgotten how to do the only thing that ACTUALLY works—find great stories and get out of their way.

This Isn’t Lucky. This Is a Template.

We need to stop treating Heated Rivalry like it’s some weird outlier that happened despite the rules.

It’s not. It’s the prototype. The blueprint. The thing everyone should be copying.

What worked:

• Trust the story

• Cast for talent, not followers

• Let artists have their vision

• Stop trying to reverse-engineer cultural relevance from spreadsheets

This is how it used to work. This is how it should work.

The global entertainment landscape is more competitive than ever. Independent creators are building empires on YouTube. Korea is eating our lunch. The UK keeps making shows that cost nothing and matter more. And now Canada has broken through the noise with a certified hit.

If Hollywood wants to stay relevant, it needs to stop trying to out-spend everyone and start trying to out-story them.

That means saying yes to weird. Yes to unknown. Yes to the risk.

What’s Actually at Stake

I’m going to be very clear about what we’re losing when Hollywood plays it safe.

We’re losing the talent we never discover because no one will take a chance on unknowns. How many Connor Storries are out there right now, waiting for someone to see past their social media metrics and recognize their actual ability?

We’re losing the stories that don’t get told because they can’t be justified in an algorithm-driven development meeting.

We’re losing audiences who are tired of being fed the same pre-approved content and are finding what they actually want elsewhere. The fragmentation everyone’s so worried about? It’s happening because Hollywood stopped giving people reasons to pay attention.

Most importantly, we’re losing the cultural conversation on a global stage. Entertainment used to be where we worked through our collective anxieties, where we found shared language for things we couldn’t articulate, where we discovered new ways of seeing the world. And Hollywood was always at the forefront.

Heated Rivalry is reminding us of what is possible when you trust the work. When you trust the actors.
When you trust the audience to show up for something real.

Be Better Hollywood

I want to be clear: this isn't about tearing Hollywood down. I love this industry. I've devoted my life to it. I desperately want it to succeed and bounce back from whatever the hell is happening right now.

This is about wanting Hollywood to be braver, to be what it was always supposed to be

I think that is one of the reasons I packed up and left LA to take my chance with an international market. Maybe my credits and experience will be taken seriously somewhere else?

I mean, yeah, I may not be a 20-something hot guy with a butt that the internet is going crazy for….but I CAN play his therapist in season 2 of Heated Rivalry. Jacob Tierney…call me! :)

Also btw…Jacob Tierney is giving Taylor Sheridan (who just got a BILLION dollar overall deal from NBCUnivesal btw) a run for his money. Jacob is flipping on it’s head the type masculinity that Taylor portrays on ALL his shows and breaking through in a way that Taylor just hasn’t in terms of mass appeal and being a part of the cultural conversation. Like, yeah, I know Yellowstone exists, but I’ve never seen a single frame of that show. Meanwhile, I’m about to watch Heated Rivalry for the second time in two weeks.

Where is Jacob’s overall??!!

Great art requires someone to take a chance.
When they do—when they let artists be artists—we all win.

Hollywood just needs to remember that.
Or get comfortable watching everyone else eat their lunch and have our talent be discovered by someone else.

Love y’all.

If you want to support my work (moving is expensive) and/or buy me a coffee ☕️ —$5 goes a long way ;)