‘Heated Rivalry’ star reveals major mistake in his big episode 6 scene

Even the genius minds behind Heated Rivalry can make a mistake now and then.

Actor François Arnaud, who plays veteran hockey star Scott Hunter on the Canadian romance that’s had everyone in a chokehold, reveals in an upcoming interview on SiriusXM’s Smith Sisters Live that a continuity error in his character’s timeline wasn’t caught until after filming was already completed.

In a preview of the interview released Thursday, Arnaud explained how the show’s production team had to make a last-minute change to the final cut of season 1’s finale episode while editing.

“Do you think we’ll get any intel on what happened between Scott and Kip between those years of, ‘I can’t do this’ and the kiss on the ice?” co-host Mariah Smith asked, referring to how the show changes the timeline of Scott and his beau, the barista Kip Grady (Robbie G.K.) — who serve as the two lead characters of author Rachel Reid’s first book in her Game Changers series.

In the Reid novel that the series is adapted from, the gap of time between Scott and Kip going from uncertainty to publicly official is months rather than the several years it is on Heated Rivalry.

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“I think I’ve already spoiled that before, I’ll just say it again, even though [show creator] Jacob [Tierney] will probably, you know, give me a slap on the wrist,” Arnaud joked. “It’s because in the book, and also in the way that we shot it, there was a f— up in the timeline.”

He continued, “A lot of it was really well-conceived, but the juxtaposition of the two storylines, they didn’t really know how they were going to cut from one to the other. And so, we shot it thinking it was six months between [Kip’s] birthday and the cup, and now it’s three years.”

Arnaud recalled, “Episode 6, the speech where I win the MLH MVP award, there was a line, and they locked the cut, so it was definitely on my face where I say, ‘Fear is a powerful thing, but this year I found the one thing that is more powerful.’ So it was ‘this year’ I found the thing that is more powerful, but it couldn’t be this year. So, we had to change it.”

But, as Arnaud pointed out, the ADR (automatic dialogue replacement) works, with his character instead affirming, “But then I found the one thing that is more powerful.”

While Heated Rivalry predominantly focused on the steamy sexcapades of Major League Hockey superstars Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie), the series does give viewers glimpses of Scott and Kip’s relationship by way of time-jump scenes throughout the show.

Arnaud recently revealed to Entertainment Weekly that there’s a lot more that he filmed with his costar that goes beyond what the series showed during season 1.

“There isn’t that much sex in our episode,” Arnaud pointed out of episode 3, understandably considering how the show’s intimate scenes have become a defining element. “We shot a lot more than there is. I don’t know, maybe they’re saving it for later, but we shot a lot, like two days of sex scenes. We knew we wanted it to be sweet, sometimes clumsy, joyful, and easy, and not for an audience. Just for them to have that moment.”

The Schitt’s Creek alum shared that Tierney pitched Scott and Kip as “the emotional pendant of Shane and Ilya,” meaning “all the things they cannot access,” Arnaud recalled. Though, once he started reading, he had a different reaction.

“At first I was like, ‘Is Jacob Tierney, who I’ve known for 17 years as an intellectual, doing soft porn?’ I was like, ‘What is this?'” he admitted. “And then he really turns it on its head. Hot sex is great, but he uses hot sex as a way into so much more than that.”

While Arnaud teases “there’s more to come” with regard to the Scott and Kip story — the show has already been renewed for season 2 — he’s still trying to go with the flow when it comes to Heated Rivalry‘s overnight success. He always believed in the show and expected it to find an audience, he says, but he calls the overnight popularity “crazy.”

Arnaud’s full interview on SiriusXM’s Smith Sisters Live airs Tuesday. Watch the preview above.

Season 1 of Heated Rivalry is available to stream on HBO Max.