The sport romance genre is enjoying great success on television. In recent years, numerous TV series have drawn inspiration from literary sagas and adapted them for the small screen, and one phenomenon that fully reflects this genre is Heated Rivalry. Although it is a TV series conceived, written, and directed by Jacob Tierney, the story first came to life on paper as a series of novels Game Changers by Rachel Reid. The author in question, in a recent interview, explained why she generally tries not to think about television characters, or rather about their portrayal, when she writes about them on paper.
Heated Rivalry, the author explains why today she must avoid tying the TV series to her on-paper characters
Television adaptations can be controversial, or at least tricky to accept for certain authors, and Rachel Reid has found her little workaround, revealing that she generally prefers not thinking about the characters as real people when she writes about them.
Guest on Vibe Check on SiriusXM, the author of the novels from which Heated Rivalry is adapted addressed how the HBO Max hit series has influenced her writing process, focusing especially on the challenges of writing characters who have already been associated with specific actors: “Yes, it’s hard to write them,” Reid admitted. “I’m writing another book in the series, I’m finishing it, it’s in revision, but I basically haven’t watched the series. I watched it in December when it released, and I haven’t watched it again because I didn’t need to. I’ve seen many clips, this is true, but I needed to avoid thinking about those versions, not only for their appearance, but also because the character Scott Hunter is quite different and may or may not appear in the book I’m writing.”
The author clarified that in the novels “some characters in the series are quite different, not only in appearance, and I needed to keep in mind my own version. As much as I adore the TV renditions, I think Scott’s voice in the TV series is quite different from my own Scott Hunter, so I couldn’t pair them.” Another challenge the author faced concerns intimate scenes: “It’s really hard to write an intimate scene when you think of real people. I’m friends with all of them. What continues to worry me is that people might think the intimate scenes are some kind of wishlist I’ve drawn up about what I’d like to see them do, and that’s not the case. I really try not to think about them when I write, but it’s difficult because they’re kind of everywhere.” The second season, in any case, is currently in production and is expected to reach HBO Max streaming in spring 2027. Meanwhile the seventh volume of the paperback series titled Unrivaled is slated for library release in June 2027.
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