In October, Bazaar is celebrating our obsessions—how they delight us, connect us, and keep us going. Tune in each day for a new story, or go here to read them all.
Last November, a handful of my favorite in-the-know bookish content creators began posting about an upcoming show called Heated Rivalry. I’d heard great things about author Rachel Reid’s Game Changers hockey romance series, which the show is based on, so my curiosity was piqued. I devoured the book (on my phone!), then wondered how anyone could faithfully adapt this spicy, sex-forward, queer Canadian hockey romance. On paper, it sounds impossible.
But not in the hands of Jacob Tierney, the award-winning screenwriter, director, and creator of Letterkenny and Shoresy. On November 19, HBO announced it had moved quickly to buy the U.S. distribution rights from Crave, just two weeks before the show’s November 28 premiere.
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On December 2, my first day back in the Bazaar offices after Thanksgiving break, I dropped my bag at my desk, put on my invisible Paul Revere hat, and shouted across the open floor plan: “Guys! Has anyone watched Heated Rivalry? Because you need to.”
At the time, nobody had—yet. You know the rest. The show detonated online in early December like a nuclear bomb, fueled by the global fangirl community and the speedy work of TikTok editors. By Christmas, the show’s stars, Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, were A-list celebrities. And creator, director, and screenwriter Jacob Tierney, with his brilliant script and teeny budget, became Hollywood’s biggest success story. When so many other romance book adaptations get it all wrong, how did he do it? How did he make a queer hockey romance into a global obsession?
A new book offers some answers. Nearly a year after the show’s debut, Tierney is publishing his first book with Little, Brown: I’ll Believe in Anything, a collection of annotated scripts from season one of Heated Rivalry. Inside, fans will find a delightful opening essay by Reid herself, an introduction to the scripts by Tierney, and dozens of fascinating production secrets and trivia bits scribbled in the margins like an episode of Pop-Up Video.
Ahead of the book’s release, I sat down with Tierney to chat about his creative process, season-one production secrets, and how to make a romance book adaptation that changes the game.
Let’s start with how I’ll Believe in Anything came to be. Whose idea was it? How did it all come together? There aren’t many annotated script books out there.
It was the lovely people at Little, Brown who approached us about doing this. It was just such a cool opportunity. Of all the things I didn't expect to happen, my scripts getting published was near the top of the list.
Was it fun for you to go back and read them all?
No, it was not fun. It was a lot of work to go back and jog my memory and go through it, make notes, and to make something that I thought people would appreciate. I'm not the kind of person who has a lot of fun reviewing their own work. I don't tend to do that. So I haven't seen the show since the days that it aired. I haven't rewatched it. By the time it's done, there is a part of me that's like, “Go away.”
