\n\tHeated Rivalry creator Jacob Tierney is best known for co-writing and directing the offbeat cult-favorite sitcom Letterkenny<\/a> (and executive producing its popular spinoff Shoresy). A love story might not seem like his milieu, but Tierney tells Rolling Stone he became obsessed with Heated Rivalry after offhandedly checking out the audiobook. He thought it would be a quick read to help fix his pandemic-induced short attention span \u2014 and as a gay man, he\u2019s always down to read a queer story. Now, he calls it his \u201cgateway drug\u201d into the world of romance.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cMy first discovery was like, \u2018Oh, my God, these books are so smutty.\u2019 I\u2019d be walking my dog and [thinking], \u2018If you knew what was happening in my ears right now,\u2019\u201d Tierney says. \u201cBut what stood out to me in retrospect is that [Heated Rivalry] accomplishes a different task than these books usually do. This is not about somebody coming out, it\u2019s about two people figuring out they are allowed to be in love. And that zig where the other books zag really stuck with me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n \n\tUnlike your typical binge watch, Heated Rivalry takes place over an almost nine-year span, often jumping months or years at a time during each episode. But the central story remains fixed on the relationship between hockey stars Hollander and Rozanov. Because the two are widely known as professional nemeses, they can\u2019t actually hang out or mimic anything even close to public friendship. Instead, most of the book\u2019s action develops in secret encounters the men have between games, sponsorship events, and award ceremonies. On the ice, they\u2019re enemies. But behind closed doors, Hollander and Rozanov can\u2019t keep their hands off of each other.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t(L to R): Connor Storrie as Ilya Rozanov and Hudson Williams as Shane Hollander <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tHBO<\/p>\n \n\tTierney says that he always felt a sense of ownership over the book, a feeling he thinks many readers share by the time they turn the last page. After reading it and exploring other works in the genre, he still thought of it as \u201chis\u201d book. So when he read a Washington Post article about how popular romance<\/a> was becoming \u2014\u00a0an audience of mainly female readers that Hollywood wasn\u2019t taking seriously \u2014 he knew he wasn\u2019t alone. And when the article mentioned Heated Rivalry by name, he immediately called up one of his producing partners. \u201cI was like, \u2018I think we have to option a bunch of gay hockey porn,\u2019\u201d Tierney says. \u201cBecause if somebody else does it, I think I will be very upset.\u201d His next step: sliding into author Rachel Reid\u2019s Instagram DMs and begging to option her book.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThat was the beginning of it,\u201d Reid tells Rolling Stone. \u201cWe had a Zoom call the next day to talk about his ideas, and that\u2019s when I really got a good sense of how much he loved these books, how much he understood them and the characters, and how important it was for him to get the story right. I felt really confident after that this was going to be told correctly.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n \n\tBoth Tierney and Reid say the show moved quickly once it was greenlit in 2024. But the road to that point was incredibly long and drawn out, mostly because Tierney refused to make any concessions to TV executives about dialing down the show\u2019s sex scenes. While there\u2019s no full-frontal nudity in the series, the material is what Tierney calls \u201cdefiantly sexual,\u201d using careful camera angles, strategically arranged limbs, and moody lighting to hide genitalia while painting a pretty clear picture of exactly what\u2019s happening.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI\u2019m a gay man and this is a gay show. [The smut<\/a>] and the story are not separate,\u201d Tierney says. \u201cIt\u2019s about two people learning about who they are and what their relationship is through fucking. The only times they\u2019re being honest with each other is when they\u2019re having sex. Otherwise, it\u2019s loads of bluster. It\u2019s loads of pretending. It\u2019s loads of two people who don\u2019t, frankly, understand what they\u2019re feeling and who don\u2019t really get it takes a long time for their emotions to catch up to what their bodies are doing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tWhile the show might seem to have come out of nowhere, the popularity of Heated Rivalry didn\u2019t emerge from a bubble. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, hockey romance has been one of the fastest-growing niches in the online book community \u2014 to the point where it\u2019s created some PR nightmares for actual NHL teams<\/a>. Heated Rivalry is one of eight hockey romance books Reid has published since 2018. But she tells Rolling Stone the genre has exploded in a way she never expected when she started. She knows people love hockey romances \u2014 she just can\u2019t pinpoint exactly why.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cOne of the main reasons I\u2019ve heard from readers outside of Canada is that hockey is a sport they don\u2019t have a lot of knowledge about, so it\u2019s kind of relaxing. It\u2019s almost like science fiction\u00a0\u2014 it\u2019s a sport that doesn\u2019t seem real,\u201d Reid says. \u201cIt\u2019s a violent sport that\u2019s very emotional and passionate. And that makes it seem intriguing to people and a good setting for romance.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIt\u2019s unclear how much of the show\u2019s success is coming from book fanatics versus those discovering it organically on HBO. But Storrie, one half of the leading duo, says messages and online comments from old and new fans seem to point to the popularity coming from the palpable chemistry between himself and Williams. He says that the show wouldn\u2019t be possible without his new friendship with Williams, especially given the show\u2019s primary shooting location: one character or the other\u2019s bed.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe have to be literally on top of each other for so long and take it seriously and trust each other and remember the choreography,\u201d Storrie tells Rolling Stone. \u201cIt makes it so much easier when you really like and respect the person and also feel understood by them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIn its Peak TV era, HBO has leaned into the risqu\u00e9 only in its more highbrow or prestige titles \u2014 think\u00a0Euphoria<\/a>, The Wire<\/a>, Game of Thrones, or The Sopranos. But Heated Rivalry, with its seemingly scrappy budget and unknown cast, feels like a relative outlier, something you\u2019re likelier to find next to The Hunting Wives <\/a>in Netflix\u2019s catalogue than on the cable giant that just gave us moody awards-bait like Task and The Pitt<\/a>. (Perhaps the move presaged Netflix\u2019s just-announced purchase<\/a> of HBO Max parent company Warner Bros. Discovery.)<\/p>\n \t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n \n\tFrom a showrunner\u2019s perspective, Tierney doesn\u2019t feel any pressure to dissect exactly what has made Heated Rivalry take off. Nor does he feel the need to justify the sweaty and steamy situations in which his two main characters find themselves. He\u2019s just grateful that he got to make a show that feels true to the book that got him out of a reading slump \u2014\u00a0and excited to find out who else will join his league.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe baked-in audience that loves these books, they don\u2019t love these books despite the sex. They love these books because of the sex,\u201d Tierney says. \u201cIt\u2019s because of how [the sex] reflects real intimacy for these characters. Also there\u2019s no horny TV anymore. Why can\u2019t this be fun and sexy? Why not?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A puck floats through the air. Blades wait frozen on the ice. And the eyes of two lovers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[12687,49,48,75,5862,140293],"class_list":["post-329117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-booktok","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-hbo","tag-heated-rivalry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-rollingstone-2022\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
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