Hudson Williams and YAGA premiere leave TIFF crowd buzzing

Hudson Williams and YAGA premiere leave TIFF crowd buzzing AISLING MURPHY PUBLISHED YESTERDAY Open this photo in gallery: Hudson Williams arrives on the red carpet to promote YAGA at the Toronto International Film Festival on Thursday. CHRIS YOUNG/THE CANADIAN PRESS COMMENTS SHARE SAVE FOR LATER Listen to this article Learn more about audio Log in or create a free account to listen to this article. YAGA, the upcoming Crave show starring Hudson Williams, Noah Reid and Carrie-Anne Moss, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on Thursday evening in a cloud of fandom for another project entirely: Heated Rivalry, which 10 months ago vaulted Williams to stratospheric levels of fame for his portrayal of closeted hockey player Shane Hollander. While some premiere-goers sported Baba Yaga-inspired fashion – a chicken-feet handbag for YAGA creator and showrunner Kat Sandler, an ethereal black-and-gold robe for Heated Rivalry author Rachel Reid – a large percentage of fans showed up to the TIFF Lightbox in garb connected to a certain gay hockey romance, whose second season is expected to land on Crave in spring of 2027. Heated Rivalry’s Hudson Williams sends fans into a flurry over this $2 Canadian Tire tote bag But by the end of YAGA’s screening, which featured the first two episodes of Sandler’s half-hour thriller, the audience was buzzing – and not only about Williams, who plays two people in Sandler’s folklore-inspired whodunit. As the audience slowly filtered out of the screening room, fans lamented having to wait until Oct. 23 for the series to land on Crave: “Yagaween” quickly became the vernacular of choice for the show’s release date. First conceived as a play at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre in 2019, YAGA follows a private detective (Reid) and a local cop (Clark Backo) as they investigate the disappearance of fishery heir Henry Park (Williams) in the fictional coastal town of Whittock. Before long, the story morphs from a True Detective-style mystery to something more magical – and sinister. Thursday’s premiere ended on a cliffhanger (no spoilers here), but during the first two episodes, the audience got a taste of Sandler’s quirky sense of humour and highly feminist approach to storytelling. (Moss, best known for her work as Trinity in The Matrix series, plays a middle-aged professor “with a taste for younger men,” per Crave’s marketing materials.) Open this photo in gallery: Noah Reid, Carrie-Anne Moss, Williams and Clark Backo…