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After the success of his TV shows Letterkenny and Shoresy, Canadian director and screenwriter Jacob Tierney figured he was done telling stories about hockey. Then he found Heated Rivalry — Rachel Reid’s steamy romance novel about two hockey players who fall in love — and he realized he wasn’t quite done yet.
While the world of romance novels, particularly gay or M/M (male/male) romance novels, wasn’t something Tierney knew much about, it left him fascinated. Primarily written by women for women, M/M is one of the fastest-growing fiction genres in publishing.
“Heated Rivalry is among the first that I read, and I loved it,” Tierney tells Q’s Tom Power in an interview. “I didn’t think it was necessarily adaptable. It’s very steamy…. In the parlance of romance, it’s called ‘spicy’ and what we would call it is ‘smut.’ Joyfully smutty. It’s smut. It’s graphic.”
WATCH | Official trailer for Heated Rivalry:
Though Tierney initially thought a smutty gay romance between two hockey players wasn’t something he’d be able to get on TV, it turns out it is. His new series, Heated Rivalry, hits the small screen tomorrow on Crave in Canada, and on HBO Max in the U.S. and Australia.
“It’s about these guys who basically have sex three times a year for years and years,” Tierney says. “That’s how they know each other. That’s how you watch their relationship evolve. There are a lot of sex scenes, but none of them are the same. So you’re watching their relationship change through the sex, and you’re getting to know them through that.”
It’s about two people figuring out they’re allowed to be in love.– Jacob Tierney
While the sex may be what most viewers find exciting about Heated Rivalry, the thing that excited Tierney the most about adapting Reid’s bestselling novel was the love and joy.
“I don’t want to sound too silly or sentimental, but what excited me so much … was the joy of it,” Tierney says. “It’s that it’s a love story, and that they get to be in love.”
Growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, Tierney says stories about queer people, especially gay men, rarely had a happy ending.
“You see people going back to make wives unhappy, you see people killing themselves, you see AIDS, you see misery,” he says. “It’s the ‘kill your gays’ trope. And even when we’re placed at the front and centre, we rarely get happiness, and if we do, we don’t get it with sex. We rarely get it with youth and beauty. There’s a lot of pain growing up queer, there’s a lot of struggle, which I get and I understand and I appreciate, but to endlessly tell stories like that I don’t think is good for the psyche.
“What is so wonderful about Heated Rivalry … is there’s a happy ending. It’s about two people figuring out they’re allowed to be in love. And that felt so amazing. To be able to put that into the world felt very, very very special.”
LISTEN | Jacob Tierney’s full interview with Tom Power:
25:45The joy of gay, smutty TV
The full interview with Jacob Tierney is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Jacob Tierney produced by Kaitlyn Swan.
