Jacob Tierney on the "We disrupt this broadcast" podcast
About Shane's story resonating with the audience:
"Part of what makes Shane's story resonate so much is I think a lot of us try to be perfect and in our heads perfection never involves queerness. So either put it aside and be so amazing at something else that no one can tell you youāre not great and it's still not enough. That's when you find out, that's the liberating thing about coming out if you can, if it's safe. It's that so much of that nonsense goes away, this idea you have of yourself in your head that you donāt have to hold onto anymore."
About Shane and Ilya's sexuality:
āI love the journey, it felt very real to me, it felt very true. Shane knows something, he's not ready to go all the way. He's not ready to give up this idea that he has to be perfect and to him, being perfect does not involve being gay. I felt that way when I was a teenager, I related to that 100%. With Ilya, it's very different in that he knows exactly who he is. He just can't say it out loud. And he also can't imagine a world where he gets to say it out loud because he is acutely aware of what he would be giving up. And he's right. He's not wrong. He's 100% right."
About Season 2:
"Long Game is such a good book and what's good about it is that it continues to take them seriously. What did they do by the end of the first season is that they're out to four people and they're out to each other in terms of they're in love. And that's great. I think as most of us know who are adults, it takes more than that to make something work, right? It takes a lot of other things. And so what does the rest of it look like now? And I think as people who've read The Long Game know, it's not as freewheelingly joyful as Heated Rivalry is. And there's a lot of difficulty along the way. But I love that, you know, A: I don't need to do the same thing again, B: I also want to take Shane and Ilya seriously. I love that. That's my great privilege. My great joy as a storyteller is to get to think about these guys and reground them and do right by them and do right by the decisions they make and be interested in them. So yeah, that's what's coming."
