Heated Rivalry's Jacob Tierney goes viral for getting candid about his HIV diagnosis

Tierney, who described himself as a "full disclosure person," explained that the person who transmitted HIV to him was "off their meds" and had a "high viral" load, prompting the director to urge people to "stay on your meds."

Tierney also lamented that "a year later I would have been on PrEP," because the life-saving medication, pre-exposure prophylaxis, came on the market not long after he contracted HIV.

A year after his diagnosis, Tierney got "really, really sick again" and was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes by his HIV doctor, who was able to finally figure out what was wrong.

"There was like a year and a half where I just was basically dying all the time," Tierney said.

Tierney has not only been candid about his HIV status, but about showing honest depictions of gay sex onscreen in ways that audiences aren’t used to.

"It’s this very limiting, puritanical way of looking at sex scenes of, you either pan away and 'I don't wanna watch this,' or you omit people's sex lives entirely as though that's not a part of who they are,"Tierney told Entertainment Weekly.

"We were very aware we're making a horny show. Let it be horny. Enjoy! That's part of the fun of this, right? That's also part of the reaction we're seeing here, is that this show is different because of that. Sex is not supposed to be trauma here, and that was something I really wanted to avoid. I want it to be beautiful."

The podcast clip has been going viral on social media, where it has sparked conversations about the lasting impact of the AIDS Crisis and how thankful fans are that Tierney is speaking openly about it.

"Here in NYC the scars left by the worst era of HIV/AIDS are still fresh and likely permanent. My own dentist lost over 15 friends in the 80s to it," the original poster of the clip wrote on X. “If anyone still doubts on Jacob's intentions behind queer joy storytelling, I don't know what more to say, really."