“Heated Rivalry” showrunner Jacob Tierney is in the midst of writing Season 2 of the hockey romance series, which he says will find Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) “in much more serious territory” than the lovers were in the first instalment.
“It’s different. It really is different,” Tierney said during a panel alongside “Heated Rivalry” book author Rachel Reid Saturday at BookCon at the Javits Center in New York. “And the challenge of it is, from an adaptation point of view, is that you’re in much more serious territory. A lot of the initial — there’s still lots of flirting and lots of sex — but this kind of danger, this kind of hotel-room-adolescent-sex stuff is largely gone. And so it presents really new challenges.”
Tierney brought on Michael Goldbach as co-writer for “Heated Rivalry” Season 2 to assist in the process as the production team hopes to get the new episodes out sooner rather than later amid the immense popularity of the Crave/HBO Max show’s first season. The storyline in Season 2, which is based on Reid’s book “The Long Game” (the sequel to “Heated Rivalry” and part of Reid’s overall “Game Changer” series), is more complex than the plot in the first season of the show, as it finds Shane and Ilya facing the realities of being in a relationship after a slow-burn romance.
“Part of the reason you start off with ‘Heated Rivalry,’ as far as adapting goes, is because you want to get to ‘The Long Game,’” Tierney said. “Because ‘The Long Game’ is an emotionally sophisticated book that takes this couple seriously. What I’ve always said about this show is there are a lot of books — ‘Game Changer’ is in ‘Heated Rivalry’ and obviously, as I think you guys all know by now — obviously parts of ‘Role Model’ are going to be in [Season 2], to the great surprise of absolutely nobody. But Ilya and Shane are the heartbeat of this series, of my show. It’s always going to be about Ilya and Shane, that is what is the trajectory that runs through it as their world expands.”
Tierney joked that he refers to Reid’s “The Long Game” book as “Sex Scenes From a Marriage,” noting a big fight between Shane and Ilya is one of his favorite moments from the story.
“There’s a Bergman-y kind of, what do you do after the rush of danger is gone and now you have to live in a relationship where you still aren’t communicating properly, much as you would like to?” Tierney said. “You can say you love each other, but as adults know, there’s so much more to making a relationship a success.”
As Tierney confirmed, Reid’s book “Role Model” — which is part of the overall “Game Changer” novel series but follows the relationship of hockey player Troy Barrett and team social media manager Harris Drover rather than Shane and Ilya — will be worked into “Heated Rivalry” Season 2.
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“In ‘Long Game’ you are like, OK, we’re here to ground this in something that feels very real,” Tierney said. “And the same thing with Troy and Harris, right. I think there’s an easy, fascicle way of looking at ‘Role Model’ as it’s very grumpy/sunshine, it’s very apple orchard. It can drift into things that you want. But Troy is a really damaged guy. And Troy is quite damaged on the show. I would say we are digging into that even harder. Because that’s what’s interesting.”
From Variety US