Two former restaurant waiters led a small Canadian show to global fame
Jacob Tierney contacted novelist Rachel Reid the day after a newspaper article about hockey romance. Financiers wanted to soften the story, so he held out for backers who would leave it alone. Shot in 36 days with two unknown leads, Heated Rivalry became Crave's most-watched original series and won a Peabody Award.
The series adapts Reid's Game Changers novels and borrows its title from the 2019 second book. Hudson Williams plays Shane Hollander and Connor Storrie plays Ilya Rozanov, rival stars on the fictional Montreal Metros and Boston Raiders whose private relationship runs for years out of public view. Tierney created, wrote and directed it, producing with Brendan Brady through Accent Aigu Entertainment.
Tierney reached out on August 7, 2023, after listening to the books on audio. He worried whether their frank sexual content could survive adaptation, arguing that the intimacy was how the characters came to understand each other. Crave picked the project up from his spec script, announced in January 2025, and in March the UK distributor Sphere Abacus joined as a financier so the tone could stay intact. The budget came to just under 3 million Canadian dollars an episode.
Casting centred on chemistry. Both leads had been waiting tables, and Tierney wanted actors who looked like athletes and were comfortable with nudity. Their first read together was over Zoom, and the connection was obvious immediately. Williams later said he played Shane as autistic after Reid confirmed the character was on the spectrum, drawing on his own father. Filming began in April 2025 across Ontario and Quebec; Hamilton's Dundurn Castle stood in for Moscow, and every hockey scene was shot at the Sleeman Centre in Guelph, with real players as body doubles.
After a festival preview in Montreal on November 23, 2025, the show premiered on Crave five days later, streaming at the same time on HBO Max in the United States, where it became the platform's highest-performing acquired non-animated debut. At the 14th Canadian Screen Awards it won every category it was nominated in, including Best Drama Series. A second season, renewed on December 12, 2025, will adapt the 2022 sequel The Long Game and is slated for April 2027.
Source: Heated Rivalry
