{"id":33624,"date":"2026-08-09T01:29:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T20:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=33624"},"modified":"2026-08-09T01:29:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T20:29:09","slug":"heated-rivalry-author-rachel-reid-reacts-to-season-2-casting-criticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=33624","title":{"rendered":"Heated Rivalry\u00a0Author Rachel Reid Reacts to Season 2 Casting Criticism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<p> <!-- -->\u2018Heated Rivalry\u2019 Casts Justice Smith and Charlie Gillespie in Major Season 2 Roles<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"segment-text-only\">\n<p><strong>Rachel Reid<\/strong>\u00a0knows what she\u2019s doing.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Hours after\u00a0<strong>Justice Smith<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0<strong>Charlie Gillespie<\/strong>\u00a0were <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/1434810\/heated-rivalry-season-2-justice-smith-charlie-gillespie-are-harris-troy\">announced to star as Harris Drover and Troy Barrett<\/a>,\u00a0respectively,\u00a0in\u00a0<em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/heated_rivalry\">Heated Rivalry<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>season two Aug. 7, the series\u2019 author seemingly addressed criticism of the casting.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>As she wrote on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/rachelreidwrites?igsh=MXY2MjV4emNzc2F3cg%3D%3D\">Instagram Stories<\/a>\u00a0Aug. 7, \u201cThinking about all the people last summer who told me the casting for Ilya and Shane was wrong and bad\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Indeed,\u00a0<strong>Connor Storrie<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0<strong>Hudson Williams<\/strong>\u2019 steamy performances as the fictional hockey players couldn\u2019t have resonated more with audiences. And while Reid urged fans to trust her gut when it comes to filling more roles in the hit book-to-TV adaptation moving forward, supporters of the franchise have their concerns.<\/p>\n<p>Mainly, many die-hard fans of the\u00a0<em>Heated Rivalry\u00a0<\/em>universe were\u00a0skeptical\u00a0about Smith&#8217;s casting considering Harris is described in Reid\u2019s\u00a0<em>Game Changers\u00a0<\/em>series as \u201cstocky.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHarris is supposed to be stocky,\u201d one user wrote on X in response to\u00a0the\u00a0casting announcement. \u201cJustice is not. Let\u2019s not change that aspect of him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, another user emphasized the sentiment, adding, \u201cI love Justice, and I think he\u2019s a fantastic actor, but this is a bummer for Harris.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018Heated Rivalry\u2019 Casts Justice Smith and Charlie Gillespie in Major Season 2 Roles Rachel Reid\u00a0knows what she\u2019s doing.\u00a0\u00a0 Hours after\u00a0Justice Smith\u00a0and\u00a0Charlie Gillespie\u00a0were announced to star as Harris Drover and Troy Barrett,\u00a0respectively,\u00a0in\u00a0Heated Rivalry\u00a0season two Aug. 7, the series\u2019 author seemingly addressed criticism of the casting.\u00a0 As she wrote on\u00a0Instagram Stories\u00a0Aug. 7, \u201cThinking about all the people&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/akns-images.eonline.com\/eol_images\/Entire_Site\/20260808\/faa6b724-e48b-4515-90a7-91394f5c18ff_1786219614.jpg?fit=around%7C1200:1200&output-quality=90&crop=1200:1200;center,top","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsweek-trending"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}