How Heated Rivalry Kept Shane & Ilya’s Sex Scenes Exciting

Heated Rivalry’s steamy scenes are hot enough to thaw the coldest winter day — so it’s no wonder that the hockey romance has viewers blushing and kicking their feet this holiday season.

The hit series (which hails from Canada’s Crave, but airs on HBO Max stateside) stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie as young hockey players with a potent physical connection that turns into something more.

As the stars and showrunner Jacob Tierney shared in a new interview with Queerty, telling that love story — adapted from Rachel Reid’s Game Changers novels — meant using the show’s sex scenes to show how Shane and Ilya’s communication evolves through the years.

Avoiding “Boring” Sex Scenes

In his Dec. 4 interview, Tierney explained his thoughtful approach to charting Heated Rivalry’s steamiest moments. “We’re thrilled to be making smut, and we want it to be titillating,” he said. “But we also want to be making sure that we’re pushing this relationship forward, because otherwise that gets boring.”

Using the sex scenes from Reid’s novel, Tierney worked with Williams and Storrie to plot where the men would be at in their respective journeys — so even in their most passionate moments, there was still room to grow. As Williams put it, “There are dips and falls — it’s not just a steady rise into their most sensitive place. It’s two steps forward, and one poor intimate moment step back.”

It’s a back-and-forth that keeps the pair (and viewers) on their toes. Case in point? The first sex scene in Episode 2, “Olympians.” Tierney recalled urging Storrie to not be too lovey-dovey just yet, despite the men having just taken their sexual relationship to a new level.

“After the first take, I was like, ‘You can’t be nice to him after that; you have to get uncomfortable ... we have to remember this can’t end — you have to get freaked out by this,’” Tierney told the actor. “He was being too loving. We have places to go with this still.”

Heated Rivalry’s Winning Team

That attention to detail is part of what’s made Heated Rivalry such a buzzy arrival among viewers. As of writing, it’s the No. 2 series on HBO Max, surpassing titles like I Love LA and The Chair Company.

Fortunately, the adaptation has Reid’s seal of approval. The author recently praised Williams and Storrie’s “fearless performances” in an interview with Today, and thanked Tierney for taking Shane and Ilya’s story seriously. “Like more seriously than romance ever gets taken,” she said. “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.”