How Heated Rivalry made me believe in art again (yes, really)

The Canadian gay ice hockey romance TV show (a.k.a. Heated Rivalry, about a pair of rivals on the ice who become ✨lovers✨ in secret) is a pop culture moment. But the story behind this juggernaut show is pure fairytale magic – and it has genuinely inspired me over the last month.

A fairytale. Not in the sense of meeting your knight in shining armour in the locker room showers (wink, wink). This is a fairytale in the sense that no part of this story should have happened. But it did. And it’s wonderful.

For the uninitiated, the Game Changers books (which became Heated Rivalry) began life as a self-published romance novel series with its roots in fan fiction. (The first book in the series was posted to fanfic website AO3 as a Marvel story that reimagined Captain America as a closeted gay hockey player.)

The series – and its author, Rachel Reid – gained a voracious following online. This, in itself, is improbable, due to the fact that most self-published books struggle to find an audience (hell, most traditionally-published books struggle to find an audience).

I have to imagine Reid was writing mostly for herself. She had little reason to think her books would ever be read outside of her niche. (Though romance novels can be wildly popular, they tend to be looked down upon by much of the literary world.)

However, Reid’s words found their way into the ears of a Canadian screenwriter-director, who’d had a few minor TV hits. Jacob Tierney began listening to hockey smut audiobooks to try and get himself out of a post-Covid slump.

You might imagine TV shows get made as a result of intense meetings inside Hollywood board rooms. But, in this case, Heated-Rivalry-the-TV-show began after Tierney slid into Reid’s DMs. Yes, she told him, he could adapt her books, but her caveat was that he take her characters seriously.

Tierney took this to heart. Although Heated Rivalry’s premise is outsized verging on fanciful (the two most famous players in the league, who haaaate each other, are secretly in love!), the show treats it with nuance, delving into its characters’ psyches in a way that’s incredibly emotional.

This isn’t just a show about sex – although it is that – it’s a show about trauma and perfectionism and internalised homophobia. It’s a show about the scariest thing in the world: making yourself known to another person and hoping they’ll accept you as you are.

The TV show Heated Rivalry, which was produced on a shoestring budget, was supposed to be a limited series, airing only on a minor Canadian streamer. I imagine if it had racked up a million views, Tierney, Reid and everyone else involved in the production would have been thrilled.

Instead, it broke containment.

The TV rights sold around the world. Notably, in the US, to HBO Max. (It’s now also streaming on Sky Atlantic/NowTV in the UK.)

The stars’ irreverent press tour (sample quote: “I don’t need friends, I need people who are obsessed with me”) went viral again and again, as did the steamiest scenes in the show. If the definition of popularity in the year 2026 is “something that makes you stop scrolling on TikTok”, then you can’t beat Heated Rivalry.

It’s now a bonafide worldwide hit and has earned fans as diverse as Miley Cyrus and Helen Hunt.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Those hockey boys were never supposed to make it out of their niche. So how did they?

For me, it’s pure (fairytale) alchemy: a combination of Reid’s characters, who bound off the page, and Tierney’s sensitive portrayal of what could otherwise be mere softcore porn.

Plus, of course, there’s those actors. Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie were both unknowns before being cast in the show, working as waiters to keep afloat as they tried to make it in showbiz. Storrie, in particular, who learned Russian in the space of a few weeks for the role of Ilya, threw himself into his character’s most emotional moments with the verve of a Shakespearian actor.

At its heart, Heated Rivalry is a story about people being properly rewarded for creating art. Storrie is now being feted for those emotional performances on screen. Reid is a New York Times bestselling author. Tierney has the ear of the boss of HBO.

The irony is that none of them did it for the accolades. They had no way of knowing they’d become famous.

They did it for the art. Reid wrote the fun, smutty romances she wanted to read. Tierney loved them and wanted to bring them to the screen. Storrie and Williams believed in the characters so much that they wanted to take them seriously.

That is, ultimately, what I’ll take away from Heated Rivalry. Whatever form of art you’re passionate about creating, invest in it. Keep going. Do your best. You never know, it might turn into a pop culture phenomenon. But, even if it doesn’t, the world deserves your art.