NEW YORK (AP) 鈥� To the cheers and applause of thousands of BookCon attendees, author Rachel Reid and director-screenwriter Jacob Tierney walked on to the main event stage at New York’s Jacob Javits Convention Center. The two Canadians have been international celebrities for just a few months, and still find themselves wondering if all the noise is for someone else.
鈥淲e don鈥檛 really get to experience this kind of energy and fandom in person very often,鈥� Tierney told The Associated Press just after their joint appearance, a highlight of the weekend gathering of (mostly) young book fans. 鈥淚t鈥檚 been a bit more of an amorphous online thing.鈥�
Since the first episode of 鈥淗eated Rivalry鈥� dropped last November, Tierney’s adaptation of Reid’s 鈥淕ame Changer鈥� series featuring star-crossed hockey greats Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov has become a phenomenon that made Reid a leader of the thriving genre of sports romance fiction and made out of lead actors Hudson Williams (Shane) and Connor Storrie (Ilya). Tierney expects to begin filming the second season this summer, based in part on the second of Reid’s novels about Shane and Ilya, 鈥淭he Long Game.鈥� The author, meanwhile, is working on a third Shane and Ilya book, 鈥淯nrivaled.鈥� Both are scheduled for 2027 releases.
鈥淗eated Rivalry鈥� fans know well the story of how the HBO Max show was born, and of Reid’s jarring swing from despair to exhilaration. In August 2023, she learned that she had early onset Parkinson’s disease. Days later, she received an Instagram message from a man she had never met, but would soon change her life in a very different way: Tierney.
The 46-year-old Tierney is a Montreal native, former child star and award-winning filmmaker whose credits include the TV series 鈥淟etterkenny.鈥� In October, Little, Brown and Company will release a collection of Tierney’s annotated scripts, 鈥淚’ll Believe in Anything: The Making of Heated Rivalry Season 1.鈥�
Reid, 44, is a longtime hockey fan. Born Rachelle Goguen in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she chose her pen name for the practical reason that it’s easier to pronounce and remember. She’s been open about the impact of fame and her health, posting an Instagram announcement in February that she was of 鈥淯nrivaled鈥� from this fall to next summer. Onstage, she acknowledged it had been 鈥渢ricky鈥� to write since the series took off.
鈥淚’m in a place where the whole world seems to care about what happens next to these characters,鈥� she said. 鈥淚’m still determined to stick to what I’ve always done when I was writing, just kind of pretend I’m writing for me and I hope other people like it.鈥�
During their AP interview, Reid and Tierney spoke of the joy of sex on the page and screen and how Shane and Ilya just won’t leave them alone. The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
AP: Writers talk about writing the books they want to read, and filmmakers making the movies they want to see. With these books, it comes out of that?
REID: I really like a forbidden romance. I really like the rivals-to-lovers element. I just also like a queer love story with a happy ending. And I really like hockey, so I think there鈥檚 just a lot of elements in it that are just very much what I personally would like. I think if this show had come out and had nothing to do with me, I would be obsessed with it still.
TIERNEY: I did not grow up with stories like this. We don鈥檛 as gay men, as queer people. We do not get to have happy endings in media very often. I would definitely have watched it (even if he didn’t direct it), that鈥檚 for sure. I鈥檓 sure I would have had notes. I’m a little picky.
AP: At what point for either of you did you realize that you had something big here?
TIERNEY: It was a kind of a series of increasingly surreal and overwhelming moments. And by the time the sixth episode aired, it really did feel like we were kind of at the center of a strange maelstrom. But I also was like, 鈥淎m I making this up? Is this actually happening?鈥�
REID: I did a bookstore event the day after the trailer came out. They showed the trailer at the event, and everybody in the audience knew every word of the trailer and was saying it along with the trailer. So that was when I was like, 鈥淥K, this is going to be nuts.鈥�
AP: Writers and filmmakers have talked about the difficulty of writing or filming sex scenes. Was that a challenge for either of you?
REID: Honestly, I love writing them and I鈥檝e never found that to be the difficult part. I think it might be the easiest part for me. I actually really enjoy it. Not to praise myself too much, but I think maybe that鈥檚 why people like the scenes. They weren鈥檛 hard for me. It鈥檚 not a scary thing. It鈥檚 not the part that I have to close my eyes and write or anything. It’s my favorite part.
TIERNEY: Sex is a language in this show, sex is a way that we watch this couple evolve over the course of a fairly long amount of time in terms of the story, eight years. And so the sex is different every time, a way of watching them evolve both separately and together. I think sex reveals a lot about yourself that you don鈥檛 even intend to reveal. And I find that quite fascinating as a storyteller.
AP: How real are Ilya and Shane for you? Do they live on in your heads?
REID: Yeah. That鈥檚 why I keep writing books about them, because they just keep talking. With other characters, I鈥檝e written the books and they鈥檝e left. But these guys just stick around.
AP: What is it about them that makes it that way?
REID: They’re fun to write. I love it.
AP: You’ve talked about your struggles with getting the next book done. Any updates on that?
TIERNEY: It’s a coloring book now.
REID: It鈥檚 20 pages.
TIERNEY: Don鈥檛 tell the truth.
REID: The thing that hasn鈥檛 changed is how much fun they are to write. I find their voices very easy to put on the page. More than any other characters I鈥檝e created, they arrived fully formed. They kind of just appeared one day.
AP: Were they based on anybody, at least loosely, who you know?
REID: There鈥檚 a lot of myself in Ilya, for sure. There鈥檚 a lot of, kind of hockey player archetypes 鈥� the flashy, cocky European superstar, that鈥檚 definitely a type. The uptight, very serious good boy-captain. And there鈥檚 been plenty of NHL players from decades of hockey. And I鈥檝e been a fan for decades. And obviously there have been some really great rivalries. And we鈥檙e getting probably to the end of the (Sidney) Crosby-(Alex) Ovechkin rivalry right now. But that rivalry at its peak was so fun.
AP: What do you see of yourself in Ilya?
REID: A sense of humor, mostly. It’s a little bit mean. I also kind of like to use humor to cover up emotions, you know, things like that. I think I also notice things about people a bit, but maybe stay quiet about it.
AP: I’ve heard a lot of writers talk about writing a book that gets made into a film. And the actors are just so good that when the writer comes back to writing about those characters, they鈥檙e seeing those actors in their head. Is it going that way for you?
REID: I told Jacob I wish I had never met them. (Laughing) It is challenge writing without thinking about somebody having to actually say or do what I鈥檓 writing, for sure. I鈥檓 trying to just block that out. I just need to pretend it definitely will never happen, because I think that鈥檚 the only way I can do it.
AP: And you still hope to have the next book out at some point next year?
RR: Yeah. That book will come out June 1. Hell or high water, it’s coming out.
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This story has been updated to corrected Reid’s first name at birth was spelled 鈥楻achelle,鈥� not
鈥楻补肠丑别濒.鈥�
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