‘Heated Rivalry’ authored the sex scenes of Show Season 2 Hopes

Canadian novelist Rachel Reid first saw Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams in person on the set of “Heated Rivalry,” Jacob Tierney’s television adaptation of her queer hockey book series “Game Changers.”

“They were filming the very first sex scene, their first meeting and it’s the longest sex scene in the show,” Reid says. “It was a closed set, so I sat on the couch for four hours while they did that. I had headphones on, so I could hear it and I had read the script, but I couldn’t see it. I just listened. I listened to them pretending to have sex for four hours, and I didn’t really know them, so that was weird.”

“I remember Hudson saying, ‘Do I have to keep my socks on?’” she continues. “I nodded, but no one could see me. I’m glad he did.”

Heated Rivalry stars Storrie as Russian hockey star Ilya Rozanov and Williams as his archrival Shane Hollander. The six-episode series follows the two men as they carry on a secret year-long affair before eventually falling in love.

The show became a big hit once HBO Max, which acquired the series for U.S. distribution from Canadian streamer Crave, dropped the first two episodes over Thanksgiving weekend.

On set, Storrie tapped Reid on the shoulder to introduce himself. “He looked so much like Ilya and he speaks with a Russian accent all day on set,” Reid recalls. “He asked all these thoughtful questions about the character. I couldn’t even talk to him because it was like I was explaining Ilya to Ilya. It was very strange, but I could tell right away that he was very smart, funny and charming. He’s so talented and fearless. I mean, introducing yourself to the author for the first time while having a Russian accent is, I think, a fearless choice.”

She watched Williams film the moments before Shane and Ilya had their first tryst in a hotel room. “He turned the light on and off, waiting for Ilya to come for the first hookup,” Reid says. “He didn’t have any lines, but I thought, ‘Oh, that’s Shane.'”

In just over a month, Storrie and Williams have become household names, the series has been greenlit for a second season, and several of Reid’s novels have become New York Times bestsellers.

“I have been asked to speak at the University of Cambridge,” says Reid. “I write hockey smut. I’m not Kurt Vonnegut. They said, ‘We’ve had Robert De Niro and the Dalai Lama.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, and I – I fit right in there.’”

I spoke to Reid via Zoom from her home in Nova Scotia. “I’m warning you, I think I’m still in shock,” she says. “I don’t know if I can speak coherently about this, but I’ll try.”

When you first spoke to Jacob, was there any discussion about you having any kind of creative control or say in what he does?

During the first conversation I had with him, I could tell that he understood the characters and the story so well. He laid out his whole vision for the show, and that’s really exactly what everyone just watched. That’s how he described it to me. He wanted that Scott and Kip episode. We talked about what we needed to do to make sure we got everything right, how the sex should be an important part of the show and that it should be explicit. He wouldn’t do it if he couldn’t. As soon as we had that first conversation, I thought, “You know what? He knows exactly what he’s doing. I don’t even worry about it.” I wasn’t really pushy at all. He just wanted me to read the scripts and I was really excited to do that. Obviously he was very capable of doing this without my help, but he still involves me. She [Tierney, Williams and Storrie] continued in all media and everything that mentioned me and the books. I really appreciate that, because I don’t think many authors understand that.

Which casting did you first know about?

Connor was first. I haven’t even heard of another option for Ilya. If there was, I didn’t know about it. I know Jacob was very excited about Connor. But it was something where we said he actually had to be Russian because if he isn’t it would be so distracting. People will be able to tell. The whole thing falls apart if he’s not credibly Russian. So when he told me, “Well, he’s American and he doesn’t have Russian ancestry, but he’s really good,” I thought, “Well, okay, if you say so.” I think it took a little longer to find Hudson, but once they finished their chemistry reading, Jacob was really excited about it. I can’t even imagine what other actors would have been like.

When you saw Connor and Hudson, were they anything like what you imagined when you were writing Ilya and Shane?

Not quite at first, because I was just looking at still images of it [on Instagram]. Hudson had a lot of photos of him looking like a badass and smoking or showing off all his tattoos. I thought, “I don’t see it.” But as soon as I met them on set, I was like, “Yeah, they’re actually perfect.”

Writing is such a lonely profession. What’s it like to go from just writing to now having all these eyes and attention on you?

It’s overwhelming. Authors don’t want it looked at. It’s not something natural. I used to be in a rock band, and that is an art that you create, where you immediately get live feedback from the audience and you can feed on that. But writing, even though it’s big and popular and you know a lot of people read it, you don’t know anything about it. You only really get that feedback when something like this happens. And then suddenly it’s like, “Oh, I can get bothered sometimes.” People are just really excited to meet me in a way that confuses me a little, but I’m trying to get used to it.

Have you talked to Jacob about what you’d like to see in season 2?

I think we’re on the same page about that. It’s clear that the focus should remain on Ilya and Shane. We’re not going to do season 2 and it’s a completely different bunch. It wouldn’t be very popular. Not that we didn’t expect it, but I think we’re all surprised at how popular Scott and Kip were. So now it’s, “Okay, how do you get more Scott and Kip?” I think it will mainly be ‘The Long Game’. Jacob has said that in interviews, but there is another book, ‘Role Model’, that overlaps it somewhat. So I hope we get both stories told at the same time. I don’t think there’s any other way you could do it. I hope we get more episodes.

How many episodes do you want?

I’d go up to twelve, but maybe that would be nice if it was only eight or ten.

Do you have a group of gay friends who ask you to read your lines, especially the sex scenes, to make sure they’re realistic?

I don’t write to them. When the show came out, I actually realized that a lot of my gay male friends have never read my books because they are all obsessed with the show and were all on the edge of their seats. They couldn’t believe the things that were happening. I thought, “So you haven’t read the books?” I have conversations with them. I don’t like to show anyone my writing until it’s done. My husband is someone I can send them to because he is bisexual and knows what it’s like to have sex with men. So that’s someone I can bounce things off of. But mostly I just talk to people and get information that way.

Will there ever be a Broadway musical ‘Heated Rivalry’?

I hope so, because I still have the stage rights to it. When I signed the contract, I thought, “Yeah, that’ll never happen.” But now I’m thinking, “Maybe.” We’re talking about all kinds of things now. I told Hudson a few weeks ago that it feels like we can literally do anything. It seems that we have too much power and we also have the power to destroy ourselves very easily. We could bring it all down with one bad post, one bad tweet. We could destroy the entire show and everyone’s lives. I was like, “This is too much power.”

You were talking about the Parkinson’s diagnosis when Jacob approached you about the television adaptation. How is your health today?

It makes it hard to write because I can barely control a mouse. I can’t type for that long. I find it difficult to sit on a chair for a long time. I have to think of new ways to write. I don’t know if that will be speech-to-text. I don’t know if I can write like that. It doesn’t feel natural, but I have to think of something because it takes me a long time to write now. But the amazing thing that comes out of this is that Jacob was on CNN a few weeks ago. For whatever reason, the interviewer asked him about my Parkinson’s diagnosis. I thought it was a bit strange, but the next day one of the top Parkinson’s experts in the world contacted me and asked if he could help me. I have never spoken to a Parkinson’s expert. I’m on a five-year waiting list here because I live in a very small town. Now he has found me a Parkinson’s expert, a neurologist, and I have an appointment in a few weeks. That could change the situation for me because I’m not really getting the treatment I should be getting. He also told me how to change my medication so I could sleep, because I never slept. That change allowed me to sleep all night, which really helps with my writing.