#stage 32

Jacob Tierney talks about “boring” and “fuck you” meaning “I love you” for Shane and Ilya:

“A really good friend of mine—a person who reads my scripts who's a brilliant novelist named Rainbow Rowell—she read the first episode and she said to me… “just remember that every ‘fuck you’ is ‘I love you,’ and maybe you're saying ‘fuck you’ too many times”

“And I was like oh, that's such a good call. That's a great call. Because it was just a reminder of all of the things they say to each other that are not ‘I love you’ and that are not—”

“Boring, you know, when Ilya calls Shane boring, he's saying he's in love with him. And he's not boring, [Ilya] is endlessly fascinated by Shane. And the only way he can communicate that is by making fun of him and calling him boring, because anything else would rip his soul out through his face.”

“Like that's the idea, and so even the words we use to obfuscate matter, you know?”

Jacob Tierney discusses the demanding physicality of Connor and Hudson's Heated Rivalry roles:

"What I always knew about this show—and what I like in general—is behavior is more interesting to me than dialogue.

Especially with characters like [Shane and Ilya] who are almost never talking about the topic. They are talking around things. They are full of bluster. They are bragging or showing off or being defensive. …

So it's way more about their behavior. It was so much more physical, what I would tell them to do. Because I was like—this dialogue, this scene is like 2½ pages, and not one thing you're saying matters. I don't care about it.

What I care about is what your body is doing up against that wall, and when you decide to approach him, and the way you're going to touch him, and at what point. And when you're going to let him off the hook emotionally or when you're going to hook him emotionally. That stuff is so much more important, and that you pace in around what is written. And that is deeply physical.

The best acting to me is always physical and the best platform you can give an actor—as a writer, I think—is physical stuff… I want to see what your body is doing. Your body will tell me more than your words ever will. Your eyes will tell me more.

But like, especially with these characters, because they're athletes too. It's like physicality will be everything. And that was also why these roles were so demanding, you know? There's the physicality of the intimacy, and then there's the physicality of the hockey. Everything is physical in this story."

Transcription via @heatedrivalnews

Jacob Tierney describes writing Shane’s autism with specificity in relation to Shane’s character, and how that sometimes manifests in his relationship with Ilya:

“With Shane’s autism, it’s really funny—we talked about it, and I know loads of people who are on the spectrum. And so I didn't really want to say anything about autism, I just was like, this is Shane. This is the way Shane does stuff. Because like, autism's too big. Autism is like love— there's lots of ways to love, and there's lots of ways to be autistic or for that to manifest.

And so it wasn't interesting to me—I don't have anything to offer here in the land of diagnosis. I just was like, this is the way I think Shane deals with stuff. I think that Shane loves explicit—It’s part of the reason he's in love with Ilya is Ilya gives him explicit instructions. That’s part of why he likes sex with him, because Ilya tells him what to do.

And that's a relief to Shane, you know. He loves that because then he doesn't feel like he's about to make a mistake. He comes at it from a place of inexperience and insecurity, and so if someone is telling you what to do, you’re like—okay well at least I can do this. He seems to want this, you know?... There is an element of just wanting to let go and be taken care of.”

🗣️ quote via q&a with Stage 32 on March 24, 2026

Jacob Tierney on Ilya’s relationship with his father and asking his actors for their “smartest read”:

“I love these characters, and I want them to be as interesting as they can possibly be. And so what I try to think of is, what is the most human thing you could do here? What is the most interesting?

You know I tell actors all the time—I’m like, please play this at the top of your intelligence. Don't think you're smarter than the character, I want to see the smartest read you have of this. It's the most interesting thing you can bring to the scene. And I say that to myself as a writer too, I'm like, what is the most interesting?

Well, our relationships with our parents are incredibly complicated. Your father, who you have a terrible relationship with and who you cannot be honest with? Once he's dying and once he's vulnerable? That changes for you. You're not in the same position. You still feel things, pulls and responsibilities and all kinds of stuff. Life is complicated and the people we love are complicated and love is complicated.”

🗣️ quote via q&a with Stage 32 on March 24, 2026

Jacob Tierney discusses his process approach to planning Heated Rivalry and outlining with a co-writer for season two:

"The book [Heated Rivalry] is in five parts and very quickly I was like, part one, episode one. Part two, episode two. It was very clear to me. …So in this case [season one], I actually did not outline. Because I was just using these parts of this book, and I knew these books so well at this point.

But something that I did, and that I'm trying to do again now when I'm writing the new season, is I'm trying to use—Because there's a dreaminess to this show, I try to use my memory as a guide. I'm like, what do I remember? And then I try to give primacy to the stuff that I remember and that has stuck in my brain all these years with this story.

So I’m like, oh I have to do that! And that's a nice way for me to kind of center things. Where if I have to do that, then it means maybe I don't have to do this, and it maybe means I want to combine or collapse different things.

Because if this is going to take up—If one incident that I'm thinking of is going to take up the space in an episode that I think of as the heart, …then you don't need to do a first version of it in the same way, you know? Little things like that.

That being said, for this season because I'm working with a co-writer as well, we have outlined everything.

And every time, I do approach outlining like a teenager, where I'm like, [modulates voice] I don't want to. But then when I do it, I'm always like, why don't I always do this? It makes everything so much easier. So I kind of gaslight myself in that way."

✍🏼 transcription via @heatedrivalnews.

🗣️ quote via q&a with Stage 32 on March 24, 2026.