‘Heated Rivalry’: Meet Charlie Gillespie & Justice Smith, Season 2’s Troy & Harris
What To Know
- Justice Smith and Charlie Gillespie have been cast as Harris Drover and Troy Barrett in Heated Rivalry.
- They’ll play the secondary leading couple in Season 2.
- Their characters are drawn from Rachel Reid’s Game Changers book series.
Heated Rivalry just found its secondary leading couple! Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov’s (Connor Storrie) romance will be intertwined with that of Troy Barrett and Harris Drover’s love story in Season 2. On August 7, the actors playing the beloved characters from Rachel Reid’s Game Changers book series were revealed. Justice Smith and Charlie Gillespie will bring Harris and Troy to life, respectively.
“Rachel Reid has given us two beautifully layered characters in Harris and Troy who you can’t help but root for,” series creator Jacob Tierney and executive producer Brendan Brady said in a joint statement. “From the start of the casting process, we knew we were looking for actors who could create something truly special together and bring that same depth and heart to the screen. Justice and Charlie do exactly that. They immediately connected with the vulnerability and resilience at the core of these characters, bringing an instinctive understanding of who Harris and Troy are.”
Harris and Troy fall in love in Reid’s Role Model, which overlaps with Shane and Ilya’s sequel, The Long Game. Keep scrolling to get to know everything about the characters and the actors playing them ahead of their appearance in Season 2.
Who are Troy and Harris in Heated Rivalry?
Troy and Harris are major characters in The Long Game, which will be the primary source material of Season 2. Troy first appears in a previous book, Tough Guy, as a league bully and talented player for the Toronto Guardians. His best friend (and even worse bully) is his star teammate, Dallas Kent, who is accused of sexual assault at the start of Role Model. Troy publicly calls him out and cuts ties, and as a result, the corrupt Toronto leadership trades Troy to the failing Ottawa Centaurs. Ilya has recently become captain of the team.
At the start of Role Model, we find out that Troy is gay and closeted, struggling deeply with keeping his sexuality secret. His inner turmoil worsens when his secret actor boyfriend dumps him, just before he heads to Ottawa. A brooding Troy isolates himself from his friendly teammates, but the team’s social media manager, Harris, breaks through his walls. Harris is bubbly, friends with everyone, and out and proud. Harris grew up on an apple orchard with his family and manages a congenital heart defect. Harris and Troy, who is inspired by Harris to become a better person, become each other’s friend before they catch feeling for each other.
Who will play Troy and Harris in Heated Rivalry Season 2?
Heated Rivalry isn’t casting an unknown actor in the role of Harris, like quite a few fans assumed after Season 1. Smith has quite the resume, which we’ve included below. The 30-year-old grew up in Los Angeles, California, and started landing roles after high school graduation.
Gillespie, 27, is a little less known than his on-screen love interest, but he’s been acting for quite a while, too. The Canadian actor got his start with regular and recurring roles on Canadian teen dramas.
What have Justice Smith and Charlie Gillespie been in before?
Smith’s breakout role came in the form of Netflix’s 2016 series The Get Down, though he appeared in the feature film, Paper Towns, in 2015. Since then, Smith has regularly landed major projects, including the Jurassic World movie series, I Saw the TV Glow, Detective Pikachu, and most recently, Now You See Me: Now You Don’t. This also isn’t his first romance book adaptation. He starred alongside Elle Fanning in All the Bright Places.
As for Gillespie, he appeared in Canadian teen dramas like Degrassi: Next Class before earning a role in the reboot of Charmed. He continued to make a name for himself in the teen drama space by starring in Netflix’s Julie and the Phantoms, in which he played the lead singer of a ghostly band. He recently appeared in feature films like Sidelined 2: Intercepted and One Night Only.
Will Harris and Troy get their own season?
We don’t know yet how involved Troy and Harris will be in Heated Rivalry or if they’ll get a full season, though Tierney has spoken about the characters’ appearance in Season 2 on multiple occasions. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Tierney said, “Just like you can’t tell the story without Scott Hunter, you can’t really tell the story without Troy Barrett.”
Tierney previously told Swooon about his plans to expand the show’s world with characters from Reid’s novels. “I’m excited to meet all of the fond members of the Ottawa Centaurs, including any new players that happen to show up there and maybe their social media manager…and who knows, all kinds of stuff,” he said.
It’s possible Troy and Harris will have their own bottle episode like Season 1’s Scott (François Arnaud) and Kip (Robbie G.K). There have also been rumors about a possible special standalone episode, but it hasn’t been confirmed by the show’s creators.
Heated Rivalry, Season 2, TBA 2027, HBO Max
