Connor Storrie’s before/after

Production on Heated Rivalry season two is underway (and Jacob Tierney is already pleading with fans to just be f-cking normal about it), but before we get to the second season—expected next spring—we have to do the befores and afters. You know, the stuff made before that comes out after the big break.

Connor Storrie is experiencing his before/after moment this year. His episodes of Criminal Minds, filmed before he made Heated Rivalry, aired earlier this year, as did his episode of For All Mankind. And he has another project filmed a year before he was even cast in HR coming out in September. It’s called April X and the trailer dropped yesterday. It looks like a movie that definitely exists.

This before/after phenomenon is very common. An actor breaks out big, and then some random project they made to pay the bills before comes out after their breakout moment. Undoubtedly, Storrie’s explosive fame helped April X lock down distribution. The trailer even capitalizes on “from Heated Rivalry”, just so that everyone is sure to make the breakout connection around Connor Storrie.

As for April X, it looks like a bog standard sci-fi schlock plot, a brother looking for his missing sister in a future dystopia with vaguely sexual undertones. The budget was clearly limited, the art direction “bargain bin Blade Runner”. None of this is a judgment on Connor Storrie. Actors gotta get paid, and before you hit it big, you take the jobs you’re offered. What I look for in the inevitable before/after project(s) is effort. Is this actor phoning it in because they clearly think the work is beneath them? Or are they giving A Performance, even in a project with little expectation at the time of making?

Storrie showed up in Criminal Minds. I expect he’ll be better than April X deserves, based on dialogue in the trailer. My impression of Connor Storrie so far is that his public persona is that of a goofy kid who grew up hot, and his professional work ethic seems strong. I haven’t seen him phone it in yet, and I have been looking for the before/after stuff ever since Heated Rivalry hit big. (I’ve also been checking on Hudson Williams, but his before/afters haven’t hit yet.)

It is easy to phone it in when you have a lot of natural talent, and actors do that sometimes. Jennifer Lawrence had a before/after project called House at the End of the Street, a low-budget horror movie filmed before Winter’s Bone changed her life. Let’s just say it was no one’s best work and leave it there. But it was a little different for JLaw, she had already been working steadily since her mid-teens, she had a main role on a sitcom to keep her paid while she made Winter’s Bone.

Connor Storrie, as we know, was working in a restaurant when he got Heated Rivalry. Acting wasn’t paying his bills. He had to stay hungry and keep pushing to get through to The Big One, which turned out to be HR. Now, he has to get through the before/afters capitalizing on his breakout moment, and then his career shifts fully into the next gear. The before fades away, becomes lore, projects like April X become the ancient texts for hardcore fans. For everyone else, there is only the after, and the myth that Connor Storrie arrived fully formed at 25, that Heated Rivalry was magic, and not the result of years of grinding. Projects like April X linger as a reminder that the grind existed. The breakout wasn’t an accident. It was only one part luck, and a helluva lot of work.