Exclusive Interview
‘Heated Rivalry’ Author Rachel Reid on Adapting Shane’s Coming Out Scene in Season 2
What To Know
- In Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid, Shane Hollander comes out as gay to his teammates off-page.
- The author explains why Shane’s coming out scene is only mentioned in the epilogue and not described in full.
- Show creator Jacob Tierney plans to adapt Shane’s coming out moment in Season 2, which Reid discusses with Swooon.
Heated Rivalry covers quite a bit of ground, beginning with Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov’s first meeting at 17 years old and ending when they decide to secretly be together about a decade later. However, Shane coming out to his hockey teammates isn’t included in Rachel Reid’s book. In the epilogue, which takes place a little over a year after the events of the cottage, readers find out that Shane came out as gay to the Montreal Voyageurs last season, though the scene isn’t fully described.
Reid has revealed to Swooon why the major moment happens off-page, as well as how she thinks it played out. She also shared her thoughts about the coming out scene’s inclusion in Heated Rivalry Season 2. Show creator Jacob Tierney has confirmed that the follow-up season will adapt the first book’s epilogue in addition to Reid’s The Long Game sequel. During an episode of the Loon Call podcast, Tierney said, “I can’t do [Shane coming out to his team] off-screen, that’s not how TV works… There is a privilege in novels with first-person and with interior monologue and all that stuff. I don’t get to do that.”
At New York City’s BookCon on April 19, Reid shared that she hadn’t discussed the specifics of the scene with Tierney, but she’s happy he’s going to show it in the series. “I didn’t do it because I really thought Heated Rivalry was gonna be the last book,” the author explained. “I just didn’t know when I wrote it that there’d be more books, so I just kind of had to hurry things along.”
The author continued, “And I had just done a scene in Game Changer, where Scott comes out to his teammates, so I just didn’t want to write another one. But that scene with Scott coming out was not on the show, so Jacob could absolutely do something like that with Shane, and it wouldn’t be repetitive. I’m really excited he’s gonna do it because I want to see what it’s like.”
Though she doesn’t yet know how Tierney will execute the scene, Reid has her own vision of how Shane’s conversation with the Montreal Voyageurs went down in the locker room. “In my head, it was always Shane doing it in a pretty low-key way, just like, quick one and done, and then everyone’s just not interested in really talking about it,” she described “Kind of like, it was there, it was known, but nobody was gonna ask about it, except for maybe his best friends on the team.”
“I’m just interested to see what Jacob does with it, and whatever he does, I’m sure will be great,” Reid added.
Heated Rivalry, Season 2, TBA 2027, Crave & HBO Max
