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"Jacob [Tierney] was like, 'Great, great, great, great, great. Awesome. So, yeah, just to let you know, there's a whole fourth book where your character has a relentless love, will-they-won't-they with Kip, but he's heartbroken, forlorn, and it never really comes to fruition. So if you can put all of that into two syllables, that would be awesome.'"

connor storrie and kate yablunovsky, Heated Rivalry’s Russian dialect coach 🩷

Kate Yablunovsky on working with Connor Storrie via hot tip

KY: [...] I was incredibly fortunate to work with Connor Storrie. He’s not only a very talented actor, but also an intelligent, thoughtful person with a real aptitude for languages. He approached the work with curiosity, discipline, and generosity. Working together was a genuinely rewarding experience.

So it was like real school, smack in the middle of an already super tight shooting schedule.

KY: It was accelerated and intense. For Connor, it was a crash course layered on top of an already demanding shoot, with other skills he was mastering at the same time, like ice skating and hockey. But he showed up every single day ready to work, and that level of commitment made all the difference.

I’m so glad you mentioned the physicality, because it’s so much more than just the language and voice that make Ilya so real. Everything from how Connor moves his face to how he stands in the room are just so Russian. Even the yearning feels Slavic.

KY: Absolutely. Language never exists in isolation. Physicality, posture, and even how emotion shows up in the face are all closely tied to culture. With Ilya, a lot of that “Russianness” comes from restraint rather than excess. Emotion often lives just under the surface, in stillness, in the eyes, in what isn’t said or shown right away.