This article contains light spoilers from Heated Rivalry episode 4, "Rose."
This may come as a surprise to an American audience, but the Heated Rivalry relationship between the characters of Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and actress Rose Landry (Yellowjackets star Sophie Nélisse) was not inspired by Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce.
At least, it was a surprise to this reporter after seeing the in-show media coverage of a professional athlete and pop culture superstar getting cozy in and out of the hockey rink. There are "zero" parallels, Heated Rivalry series creator Jacob Tierney tells Entertainment Weekly.
"This is such specific Montreal lore, which is where I'm from, and the city that Rachel [Reid, Game Changer author] is also obsessed with," Tierney continues. "They made all the X-Men movies there. The inspiration is Jennifer Lawrence and the X-Men movies."
Lawrence starred as shape-shifting mutant Mystique starting in X-Men: First Class (2011), followed by X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), and X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019) — all of which were filmed partly at Canada-based studios.
Nélisse's Rose Landry in Heated Rivalry is similarly a well-known actress of the day who's in town to film a role in an upcoming event film. She makes her debut in this week's episode 4, "Rose" (available to stream in the U.S. on HBO Max). With Shane unable to allow himself emotional happiness with Ilya (Connor Storrie) beyond just sex, he meets and starts up a highly publicized relationship with Ms. Landry.
"I would say Scott and Kip are closer to Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift, if you wanna blend this up in the universe," Tierney comments, referring to the roles played by François Arnaud and Robbie G.K. "But we're trying to keep it away from real life across the board."
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All those tweets featured in the episode that comment on Rose and Shane are real social media comments about Heated Rivalry that Tierney and his team repurposed.
"We stole it from our fan reaction to our show," he says. "We're still finishing the show. So it was like, What are we trying to make these up for when we could just go to our Instagram and steal these comments? My favorite one is people keep writing, 'Why is this clip 4 hours long?' So I put one of those in there."