In August 2023, Rachel Reid received news that changed her life. She was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
Four days later, she checked her Instagram direct messages and found a message from Canadian actor, writer and producer Jacob Tierney. In it, he inquired about her 2019 romance novel “Heated Rivalry.”
They met over a Zoom call the next day. Tierney presented his vision for the show — “which is exactly the show that everybody’s seeing,” Reid says.
“Getting that message at that time was pretty huge for me. It was exactly what I needed,” the author tells TODAY.com in an interview. “Not to be a bummer,” she adds with a laugh. “But, like, it was great timing.”
More than two years later, she says she’s doing OK amid her diagnosis and is determined to stay “optimistic,” especially as she looks into the future. After all, she now has a hit show on her hands.
“Heated Rivalry” has become a phenomenon since it hit HBO Max in the U.S. on Nov. 28. Social media is filled with fan edits of the show’s two leads: Shane Hollander, played by Hudson Williams, and Ilya Rozanov, played by Connor Storrie. The romance series reached HBO Max’s top 10 TV shows within a week of its premiere.
It’s also led to renewed interest in Reid’s book.
“It feels, like, not real,” Reid says. “The No. 1 book in the Kindle store is a sexually explicit gay hockey romance.”
“Heated Rivalry” is the second book in Reid’s “Game Changers” book series, each of which spotlights a different couple against the backdrop of pro hockey.
A lifelong Montreal Canadiens fan, Reid says the series started with her imagining what it would like for an NHL player to come out and be “happy, safe and fulfilled by doing that.” (The NHL has never had an out active player.)
“And then I just thought, OK, well if that happened, then what happens for other players? What’s the ripple effect of that? And that became the rest of the series,” she says.
Shane and Ilya are part of that “ripple effect.” Their story is told in 2019’s “Heated Rivalry,” the second book in the series, and revisited in book six, titled “The Long Game,” which published in April 2022.
Below, Reid discusses her experience being “kept in the loop” throughout the process of developing “Heated Rivalry” for TV, the first time she met actors Williams and Storie and if she’d ever return to writing about Shane and Ilya.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
To go back to the beginning, how did you react to receiving that DM from Jacob Tierney?
Yeah, that was a pretty good day. I had actually been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease three or four days before that. So getting that message at that time was pretty huge for me. It was exactly what I needed.
It all went pretty quickly. The next day, we had a Zoom call, and he laid out his whole vision for the show, which is exactly the show that everybody’s seeing. I was just thrilled. I was trying to keep my cool about it, but afterward, I was definitely like, oh, my God. He’s a pretty big deal in Canada, so I knew if he really wanted to do this, it would happen.
How involved were you throughout the process?
Mostly I was just, like, kept in the loop. Jacob wrote all the scripts. I was not involved in writing them, but I did read them all. He sent them all to me — even early drafts, he just wanted my opinion. I think my approval was very important to him, which is very touching and nice.
I went to visit set a few times. I don’t know anything about filmmaking, so I wasn’t really looking to interfere or anything. And I trusted Jacob completely, right from that first phone call. And the scripts were so good, so I didn’t have any worries, really.
What most surprised you about the TV adaptation process?
I didn’t expect to be so — I don’t want to say, like, respected, but it’s kind of that. I know other authors who have had their works adapted, and they did not have this experience that I had. Like either their works never really ended up being adapted at all, they were just optioned, and then then it never happened. Or, it was done in a way that they were very much not in the loop. I think a disappointing adaptation would be worse than no adaptation at all, probably.
But for me, just the whole thing was a dream. And you can even see with the way that the promotion of the show is going, everybody’s still mentioning the book, mentioning me, crediting me for so much. It’s really nice. I wasn’t expecting any of that.
What was your reaction to the first two episodes?
The first two, I love that they released them together because each one has so much going on. They’re action packed, and I feel like they could have just done one at a time and still had everybody hooked, but giving everybody two to talk about, it’s been fun.
I have seen rough cuts of the rest of the episodes. I haven’t seen the final. I said I wanted to wait and just watch it with everyone else, but the rough cuts were incredible. I truly do think the episodes get better and better, and the first two are very strong.
What were your first impressions of Hudson and Connor?
I met them on set when I visited back in May (2025). That was my first time ever on a film set.
I met Hudson first. He was filming the scene that we see in Episode 1, where he’s turning on and off a lamp, waiting for Ilya to come to the hotel room, so there’s no dialogue. Then I met him after very briefly, because he was very busy that day. I think he was in every scene that was being shot. He gave me a hug. It was definitely surreal, because I was just like, you really do seem like the character in so many ways.
But when I got home from that trip, he sent me a lovely DM, saying how much he loved playing this character and that really meant a lot to me. So definitely endeared me to him right away.
Connor, I met on set. He sort of stays in the Ilya voice all day when he’s on set. So I basically met him as Ilya, which was kind of a lot to process for me. It wasn’t until I went back and visited the set again and I got to sit down, have a beer with them, and meet him as Connor — totally different person.
They’re both just so wonderful. I told both of them when I was in Toronto last week, that just them being themselves is better marketing for the show than you could ever pay for. They’re just so authentically themselves in every interview, they legitimately are nuts about each other, they’re best friends. They say that all the time. They’re just lovely people.
Is there anything about their portrayal that has impacted your understanding of the characters of Shane and Ilya? Or, do you see them as separate, like book Shane and TV Shane?
I think I have to see them that way if I want to ever write anything with them again, because that is difficult. But their performances are so strong — I was telling Connor, it’s like, I don’t remember what Ilya used to look like. Like, I can’t see him in my head anymore. So that’s tricky.
I think the way Hudson plays Shane, that’s kind of changed some of the story stuff for me. I was like, jeez, he’s really in love with him, really quickly. You can see it on his face. So, yeah, that’s a little bit different, but I like it.
They play them the way they should be portrayed, which is very young and boyish and playful. I think sometimes in romance novels, no matter how old a character is, whether they’re in college or whatever, we picture this rugged man. They’re often kind of written that way, and I feel like maybe even I did that, too, with these characters. But when you see them actually brought to life onscreen, it’s like, oh yeah, they’re so young.
Why does this adaptation work so well? What is it about the approach that the show took that we maybe haven't seen before?
Jacob took it very seriously. Like more seriously than romance ever gets taken. I hope it’s going to change the way romance gets filmed. I don’t think anybody thought you could actually take a high heat romance and really film it, you know? And he did. And I get the same feeling watching this that I get from reading a high heat romance. There’s nothing different about it, it’s all right there. I think that’s really brave.
I’m constantly blown away by the fearless performances that Connor and Hudson have given us. But I do think this could be a big change for the way that romance gets filmed, but also maybe the way that romance as a genre gets viewed. I’ve seen quite a few people online, especially men, who didn’t seem to know that these books had this much sexiness in them. They assumed they were sort of Hallmark level. If they think that this is a very compelling study of a relationship — that’s what romance is. It’s deep character work, it’s a study. I hope that people learn that and think about it more because there’s some great writing in the romance genre and I don’t think it gets respected very much. So God love Jacob Tierney for changing that.
⭐️ Author’s note: Episode 3 of “Heated Rivalry,” which dropped on HBO Max Dec. 5, is about Scott and Kip, the main characters of “Game Changer,” Reid’s first book of the series.
So Episode 3 is a mini-version of the “Game Changer” story?
Yeah, but it’s important to the story. It has to be because Scott is the ripple effect. I really love what Jacob did with this episode, and it was one of the first things he described to me about his vision when we spoke on the phone the first time — he really wanted to do this, this bottle episode.
I know people are a little bit like, “But Shane and Ilya,” but honestly, it’s so good and it’s so important to their story. And you’ll see why later if you haven’t read the books, it’s all going to make sense.
Yes, it is a huge risk to take the third episode of a six-episode series and make it about different characters. But I do think it was the right decision, and I really am proud of this episode, and I hope people like it. It really is a great, great episode, and I think it just enhances the overall story. And it’s very sexy, if that helps.
As the author, what does it mean to you, still getting to tell the story that started it all?
I was really touched that Jacob wanted to include that. Obviously, that’s my first book. So sometimes, you think that one can be left out. But I mean, he took the best parts of it and made it into a nice episode, which I really liked.
I was nervous about watching it the first time, because I think everybody has negative feelings about their first book. I always wish I could go back and and redo it, but that’s kind of what happened here. Jacob took it and condensed it, and I was like, oh, it’s pretty good when you cut out all the stuff that I don’t like. (Laughs.)
Episode 2 opens with a montage of Shane and Ilya texting. In the book, they were meeting up during this two-year period. In the show, were they meeting up?
Nope. That had to be changed.
I’ll say this — their first time having intercourse, the decision was made to move that to the second episode to not have everything in the first episode. So because of that, the snowstorm was added to the first episode to delay their meeting. And then the Vegas rooftop happened. And then, yes, two seasons go by where Ilya is just relentlessly texting Shane.
In the book, they are hooking up at that time because they’ve already had intercourse. But obviously we can’t skip that first time. Jacob said this is all my fault, because I didn’t describe what happened in those two seasons in the book. But I was like, no, it’s your fault for moving it to the second episode.
That’s really probably one of the biggest changes. There’s not too many big changes, but that was just mainly just because of that weird kind of having to move that scene to the second episode.
Would you ever revisit Shane and Ilya's story?
I have story ideas for them that I’ve been working on. They never leave my head. I think my other characters do, but those guys stay with me.
I definitely left them in “The Long Game” at kind of an interesting point that probably people would like to see more of. So I do have story ideas. Some of them I’m working on, I’m trying to figure out what to do with them, but there’s going to be something. You’ll see something for sure.
After your Parkinson's diagnosis, how are you doing now?
I’m doing OK. It mostly affects the right side of my body, which is my dominant side. So it does make writing and using a computer challenging. It makes signing books challenging. My plan next year is to do a lot, a lot of events, a lot of traveling, all of it, because I can. I’m optimistic, because there’s a lot of new treatments, a lot of talk of a possible cure. I feel like I’m very early stages. I’m 45, and that’s pretty young for Parkinson’s. But for the most part, yeah, I’m mostly fine. I just shake a lot.
The timing of the diagnosis and the DM …
It gave me something positive to focus on over the last two years, because otherwise I probably would have gotten very sad, but instead, I’ve just been very excited. And then I thought maybe there’d be an adrenaline drop after the premiere and all that stuff. But it’s just been so fun. The response to the show has been so much bigger than any of us imagined.
Maybe that drop comes next year, I don’t know — but probably not, because I’m sure that they’ll be, like, another season.
New episodes of “Heated Rivalry” drop Fridays on HBO Max leading up to its season finale on Dec. 26.
