{"id":730855,"date":"2026-08-07T22:30:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T22:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/730855\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T22:30:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T22:30:09","slug":"heated-rivalry-season-2-casts-justice-smith-and-charlie-gillespie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/730855\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Heated Rivalry’ Season 2 Casts Justice Smith and Charlie Gillespie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tJustice Smith and Charlie Gillespie are joining the Season 2 cast of \u201cHeated Rivalry<\/a>,\u201d the hit romantic drama from Canada\u2019s Crave Media that airs on HBO Max in the U.S.<\/p>\n

\n\tSmith will play Harris Drover and Gillespie will play Troy Barrett. While official character descriptions have not yet been provided by Crave and HBO Max, in Rachel Reid\u2019s \u201cGame Changers\u201d books, Troy is a hockey player who gets traded to the Ottawa team after severing ties with a former friend and teammate on the Toronto team who is accused of sexual assault. Harris is Ottawa\u2019s social media manager, who becomes determined to get Troy out of his shell.<\/p>\n

\n\tSmith and Gillespie will lead Season 2 alongside returning stars Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams, who had their breakout roles in Season 1 as Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander, respectively. Season 1, per the official logline, followed \u201cwhat began as a secret fling between two fresh-faced rookies\u201d and \u201cevolved into a years-long journey of love, denial and self-discovery.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSmith, whose credits include \u201cI Saw the TV Glow\u201d and \u201cNow You See Me: Now You Don\u2019t,\u201d is repped by WME and Sloane, Offer, Weber & Dern. Gillespie, who has appeared in \u201cOne Night Only,\u201d \u201cSplitsville\u201d and \u201cSuze,\u201d is repped by Vanderwerff Talent, David Dean Management and Meyer & Downs, LLP.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHeated Rivalry\u201d is commissioned by Crave,\u00a0owned by Bell Media, with the participation of the Canada Media Fund. Jacob Tierney created the series and serves as director while executive producing alongside Brendan Brady and Jayme Alter Wilson. Lori Fischburg and Liane Cunje serve as producers, with Reid as consulting producer. Mike Goldbach is a co-writer on Season 2. Bell\u2019s Sphere Abacus distributes the series internationally.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cRachel Reid has given us two beautifully layered characters in Harris and Troy who you can\u2019t help but root for,\u201d Tierney and Brady said in a statement. \u201cFrom the start of the casting process, we knew we were looking for actors who could create something truly special together and bring that same depth and heart to the screen. Justice and Charlie do exactly that. They immediately connected with the vulnerability and resilience at the core of these characters, bringing an instinctive understanding of who Harris and Troy are.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Justice Smith and Charlie Gillespie are joining the Season 2 cast of \u201cHeated Rivalry,\u201d the hit romantic drama…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":730856,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,124347,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-730855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-heated-rivalry","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=730855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/730856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=730855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=730855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=730855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}