It is a truth universally acknowledged that a good story starts with a good first line. In TODAY’s “Cold Open,” authors tease their buzzy upcoming release by revealing and explaining its first line, paragraph or page.
The pivotal first scene of the TV adaptation of “Heated Rivalry,” in which hockey stars Shane and Ilya meet for the very first time, was written and filmed to be way longer than what viewers saw in the final cut.
TODAY.com has an exclusive first look at “I’ll Believe in Anything,” a book about the making of Season 1 of “Heated Rivalry,” featuring scripts annotated by the show’s creator, writer and director, Jacob Tierney.
In an excerpt of the script, Tierney reveals that the first scene of the show — about a minute long in the episode’s final cut — was originally written to be up to six minutes. It sees a teenage Shane Hollander, played by Hudson Williams, introduce himself to another junior hockey prodigy, Ilya Rozanov, played by Connor Storrie, at a junior hockey tournament in Regina, Saskatchewan.
Fans of the show know that their meeting sets in motion a yearslong secret romantic tryst, occurring in the background of their respective rises through the ranks of professional hockey.
The scene starts with Shane awkwardly approaching Ilya outside a rink while the latter smokes a cigarette. In the final cut of Episode 1, they only exchange a few words. The two shake hands, Shane comments on the “no smoking” sign above Ilya’s head before calling the Russian “an awesome player to watch.” The teens taunt each other briefly before Shane heads inside.
But the annotated script reveals that their first conversation was much more substantial, with plenty of teasing.
“This was shot exactly as scripted, and then we cut it down,” Tierney writes. “Our editor Arthur Tarnowski would present an option of what a scene looks like at a minute and a half, or three minutes, six minutes, or whatever it was.”
The cut dialogue begins with Shane asking Ilya if his parents are at the tournament. After he answers no, Shane says, “That must suck. With Christmas and all.”
“Christmas is later in Russia,” Ilya says.
Awkward silence continues to ensure, and Shane finally breaks it by commenting on how next year’s event will occur in his hometown of Ottawa, Canada.
“Is Ottawa more exciting?” Ilya responds, after the stage directions note he “can’t help but smirk a bit at Shane’s nerves.”
After “they both kind of smile at each other,” Ilya makes the next remark, asking if Shane’s parents are with him.
“Yeah, they try to come to most of my games,” Shane says.
“Nice for you,” Ilya responds.
Tierney also describes his goal for how he wanted Shane and Ilya to come across to viewers in this first scene. He writes he wanted to show a “charming formality to Shane.”
“He’s trying to be a good sport and wants to introduce himself, and he has a bit of awkward-dad energy,” Tierney writes in the annotations.
Of Ilya, he adds, “I wanted people to watch Ilya go from suspicious to quite playful, to show that playfulness would come. It would be a hallmark of his personality.”
Read the full annotated scripts below.
