'Heated Rivalry' Author Rachel Reid Pushes Back on Season 2 Casting Backlash

Rachel Reid, author of the 'Game Changer' book series, has a message for viewers unhappy with the latest casting news on 'Heated Rivalry': she has heard it before.

Reid posted an Instagram story on 8 August 2026 addressing online negativity surrounding the Season 2 cast announcements for the TV adaptation. "Thinking about all the people last summer who told me the casting for Ilya and Shane was wrong and bad…" she wrote, alongside a side-eyed selfie, according to Variety.

Her point was sharp. Season 1 cast members Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams — who play Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander, the show's central pair of rival hockey players in a secret romance — had faced similar pushback when they were first announced. Reid had previously posted an Instagram reel in February saying it was hard to imagine anyone being perfect for those roles, and the criticism proved misplaced once the show aired.

Now the cycle is repeating. On Friday, Justice Smith and Charlie Gillespie were announced as new additions to the Season 2 cast. Smith will play Harris Drover and Gillespie will play Troy Barrett, as reported by Variety, Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter. The Hollywood Reporter described the roles as the season's secondary leads. Storrie and Williams remain on the series alongside the new arrivals.

For readers unfamiliar with the source material, Harris and Troy come from 'Role Model,' a book in Reid's 'Game Changers' series. In the novels, Troy is a professional hockey player traded to the Ottawa Centaurs after severing ties with a former Toronto teammate accused of sexual assault. Harris is the Ottawa team's social media manager, determined to help Troy settle into his new squad. Crave Media and HBO Max had not released official character descriptions for either role at the time of reporting, per Variety.

This is not the first time the 'Heated Rivalry' team has confronted hostile fan behaviour online. In March, cast members Hudson Williams and François Arnaud posted matching Instagram stories calling out viewers who leave hateful comments on their castmates' pages. "Don't call yourself a fan if you share racist/homophobic/biphobic/misogynist/ageist/ableist/parasocial/bigoted comments of any kind," they wrote. "None of us need your hateful love" (Variety).

For fans of the books, the Season 2 expansion signals that the adaptation is reaching beyond the first novel's love story. The new characters bring a different dynamic: a player navigating fallout from a teammate's misconduct and a staffer trying to hold a dressing room together. How closely the scripts will follow the book's plotlines remains to be seen, given that no character descriptions have been published.

Reid's Instagram post, though brief, draws a straight line between two casting cycles. The first round of criticism did not stop Season 1 from reaching screens. Whether the second round changes anything about Season 2's trajectory is, so far, a question the platforms have not answered.