Breakout gay hockey drama Heated Rivalry is continuing to add to its season two cast, with Daniel Diemer set to play Ryan Price, a tough guy enforcer battling anxiety off the ice.
Diemer is best known as Paul in Netflix’s The Half of It and Tyson in the Disney+ series Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Shaheen Jafargholi will perform the role of aspiring musician Fabian Salah after star-turns in War, The Agency and Lost Boys and Fairies.
Ryan and Fabian’s love story drives Rachel Reid’s novel Tough Guy, the third installment in her Game Changers series, which Heated Rivalry is based on. Ryan was briefly mentioned during the first season during a conversation between the show’s leading men Shane Hollander, played by Hudson Williams, and Ilya Rozanov, played by Connor Storrie, as the latter spent a season together playing in Boston.
The news comes after several additions to the season two cast over the past month including Justice Smith, Charlie Gillespie, Emily Hampshire, Edvin Ryding, Robert Naylor, Sabrina Jalees and Priyanka. Hampshire and Priyanka were cast as the characters of Vanessa and Tarek, who also hail from Tough Guy — the pair are Fabian’s best friends.
Ryan and Fabian’s novel takes place while Ryan is on the Toronto team, alongside fellow season two additions Troy Barrett, portrayed by Gillespie, and Wyatt Hayes, portrayed by Naylor. However, both Troy and Wyatt eventually play alongside Ilya in Ottawa.
Diemer and Jafargholi join Williams, Storrie, Gillespie and Smith in leading roles for season two.
“Fabian and Ryan each bring a distinctive energy to the world Rachel Reid has created,” said series executive producers Jacob Tierney and Brendan Brady in a statement. “They are bold, complicated, and deeply compelling characters, and finding actors who could really take on all of those different sides was so important to us. Daniel and Shaheen bring such confidence and emotional honesty to the roles. We can’t wait for audiences to see what they do with Fabian and Ryan and how they make these characters their own.”
Heated Rivalry is produced by Accent Aigu Entertainment in association with Bell Media. Season one of the award-winning show was adapted from the second novel in the Game Changers series, Heated Rivalry, which focuses on the ever-complicated situationship between Shane and Ilya, who are generational talents in the world of professional hockey and sworn on-ice rivals. The first novel of Reid’s book series, Game Changers, centered on François Arnaud’s character Scott Hunter and Robbie G.K.’s character Kip Grady and served as secondary material for the first season.
Season two of Heated Rivalry will be adapted from Reid’s sixth novel in the series, The Long Game, which continues Shane and Ilya’s story. The novel finds the hockey players now in a committed relationship with one another and learning how to build a life together while hiding their true feelings for one another in public. Series creator Jacob Tierney has said that Role Model, which takes place concurrently with The Long Game, will also be source material for the season. Role Model follows Troy’s romance with the Ottawa team’s social media manager Harris Drover, played by Smith.
The TV series is created by Jacob Tierney, who is also the writer, director and executive producer along with Brady and Jayme Alter Wilson. Lori Fischburg and Liane Cunje are producers, with Reid serving as as consulting producer.
Mike Goldbach serves as co-writer on season two. Additional second season cast already announced includes Emily Hampshire, Edvin Ryding, Robert Naylor, Sabrina Jalees and Priyanka.
Diemer is repped by Atlas Artists, Nuance Management and Gersh Agency. Jafargholi is repped by Simon Grant Jones at JAG.
