Exclusive Interview
‘Heated Rivalry’: François Arnaud and Robbie G.K. Break Down Scott & Kip’s Game-Changing Moment
What To Know
- In Heated Rivalry Episode 5, Scott publicly kisses Kip after winning the Stanley Cup, making him the first out gay hockey player.
- François Arnaud and Robbie G.K. break down their characters game-changing moment to Swooon.
- The actors also share behind-the-scenes details about executing the kiss.
[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers from Heated Rivalry Episodes 1-5.]
Scott (François Arnaud) and Kip (Robbie G.K.) have finally gotten the sunshine they deserve! In Heated Rivalry Season 1’s penultimate episode, Scott not only wins the Stanley Cup, but he also uses the occasion to plant a kiss on Kip in front of the world, becoming the first openly gay professional hockey player.
Before their big moment, Scott and Kip only appear together in Episode 3. They fall hard and fast, but a few months later, Kip tells Scott that he doesn’t want to keep lying to his loved ones. Scott asks Kip to keep their relationship secret for a few more years, leaving them at an impasse. Kip puts some distance between them afterward, and when they come out in Episode 5, it is a few years later. (Three, to be exact.)
Arnaud isn’t quite sure what happened between Scott and Kip during that period, but Scott knows Kip is at his game. Still, he doesn’t plan to bring him onto the ice before it happens. “I don’t think that Scott has that on his mind at all while winning the game and winning the cup and being the captain of the team,” the actor told Swooon in a joint interview with G.K. “Then everybody else brings down their wives and their kids onto the ice, there’s something that we — I’ve seen it once in ADR, so you know better than I do — but there’s this moment where Scott is feeling for the first time, in a very concrete way, how alone he is.”
Continuing to break down Scott’s post-win mindset, Arnaud said, “There’s a moment where he feels this loneliness so acutely that it becomes intolerable and just decides to make that move, but at the same time, [he’s] completely high on victory and love, and also fear and trepidation. It was just such an exciting scene to shoot because of all those conflicting emotions that end up going in all the same direction… The moment it happens, there is no regret.”
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Kip, who G.K. says is feeling “a whole salad bowl mix of different emotions” at the game, doesn’t expect Scott to make that move. Before he’s waved down onto the ice, Kip tears up over Scott’s victory. “I think there’s a big part of him that’s very proud of Scott, just as somebody who you respect as a person, and you see them succeed, and you see success,” G.K. said. “So I think that there is some truth to that line of like, ‘I’m not sad,’ because I think Kip is genuinely happy for Scott, and I think he’s proud of himself as well, for kind of playing this small little part in this greater success of somebody he admires.”
Scott and Kip’s complicated emotions push them toward that cinematic lip-lock, which took two or three takes to get absolutely perfect. “It was a couple of moving parts, too, between the shots on the ice and then the shots of me coming down from getting through the crowd, and then trying not to look super awkward, climbing over everything and getting it all there,” G.K. said, adding that he hadn’t seen the final version yet.
There was also the matter of the kiss taking place on the ice — and Arnaud wearing Scott’s hockey gear, skates included. “I don’t know if you can see it in the shot — but I think so because I think the boys, Connor [Storrie] and Hudson [Williams], commented on it — that once you get on the ice, I’m just like skating backwards, and you’re not making any steps,” he said, referring to G.K. “You’re just letting yourself glide. They said it was really sweet, that moment where he’s just letting himself be so stunned.”
G.K. was wearing ballet flat-style slippers of some sort, which also played a part in the final product. “I’m a bit taller already, but on skates, it’s just crazy,” Arnaud chimed in. “But I think it works. It doesn’t look dumb. There were no apple boxes involved.”
The cast was bulk-shooting their hockey scenes the day the kiss took place, which explains Storrie and Williams’ presence. (In Episode 5, their characters watch Scott and Kip’s kiss on TV.) “That day was crazy,” G.K. recalled. “Actually, that was my last day on set shooting, the day that we filmed that, and so it was pretty fast and furious, as far as the stuff that we had to get while we were in the hockey arena with the fans and background actors who are in the stadium.”
The actor pointed out that it was their first intimate scene together in front of other people, besides creator Jacob Tierney and the show’s core team. After Arnaud countered that “the smoothie shop stuff was not very subtle,” G.K. said, “True, but there’s still at least room for denial there, I guess, in the court of social law.”
He continued, “I think it was definitely moving. I think that that was a very nice way to come back, obviously, from Episode 3, was having that big kiss and having it be in front of a lot of the characters that are shown in this storybook, and having this moment in front of people was kind of a natural, Scott-and-Kip little button and a nice little way to tie it off for me.”
Though his final day on set gave G.K. a sense of closure, it isn’t the last we’ll see of Scott and Kip in Season 1. Arnaud already teased “powerful moments” for the couple in Episodes 5 and 6, and told Swooon that “their presence is certainly felt throughout the rest of the season.”
What are you hoping to see from Scott and Kip in the finale? Let us know in the comments below!
Heated Rivalry, Season 1, Fridays, HBO Max
