Crave/HBO Max's hit gay hockey romance Heated Rivalry shows the love story between Canadian player Shane Hollander and Russian player Ilya Rozanov (played by Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, respectively), but how do actual queer Russians feel about the show?

Gay Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar writes about Heated Rivalry and its impact on queer Russians in a new Vanity Fair piece. In it, he asserts that he knows "quite a few people like" Ilya, and "I might even say that I have been him."

"Like the character, I was born toward the end of the Soviet Union, a time when homosexuality was still a criminal offense. My father was a military officer," Zygar writes. "I grew up in a society where coming out never seemed possible; it was always clear that being gay in Russia would mean being an outcast, being cursed, having no chance whatsoever."

Russia adopted its first law against LGBTQ+ "propaganda" in 2013, shortly before the Sochi Olympics; the country banned "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations" among minors.

In 2022, the law became stricter, banning "propaganda," which could be loosely interpreted as any form of LGBTQ+ representation, to adults as well. The following year, the Russian Ministry of Justice labeled the "international public LGBT movement" as an extremist element and called for the state to "ban its activity in Russia."

These laws have had big impacts on Russian celebrities and pro athletes, preventing them not only from coming out but from supporting queer rights at all.

In 2023, several Russian NHL players refused to wear Pride-themed warm-up jerseys due to the law. Several American players also refused to wear the jerseys for political reasons. The Chicago Blackhawks, which had several Russian players, decided the organization as a whole would forgo wearing the jerseys out of concerns for the safety of its Russian players.

Now, Heated Rivalry is giving some queer Russians new hope.

While Heated Rivalry isn't available on any official Russian streaming platform, Russian fans are reportedly loving the series. Kinopoisk, the Russian equivalent of Rotten Tomatoes, shows Heated Rivalry at a rating of 8.6, surpassing other shows like Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad, which both have an 8.3 rating.

"I know that thousands of gay men in Russia watched Heated Rivalry — on pirate sites, of course, because they have no legal way to watch the series. The Russian authorities would undoubtedly ban the show as LGBTQ+ propaganda, but most Western platforms don’t function in Russia either," Zygar says. "As a result, Russian queer people have to break every possible law simply to live in the same world as members of their own community."

This article originally appeared on Out: 'Heated Rivalry's Ilya Rozanov is now a queer icon in Russia

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