Jacob Tierney for Deadline
"Who said I’m doing it all? There’s a lot of material," Tierney coyly told Deadline, suggesting that some storylines involving Shane and Ilya might continue into another subsequent season.
"The Long Game is like sex Scenes from a Marriage. I don’t want to say we are making Bergman here, but you’ve got your happy ending, you’re in love, you get to be in a relationship. But, as most adults know, you think that’s when it gets easy? It’s not. That’s when it gets hard. That’s when you have to make real decisions. That’s when real life can often smack you in the face."
"We’re continuing to take this relationship on a journey that will end happily, but along the way is full of ups and downs and realizing loads of shit about yourself, about your partner and about how you want to live and what it means to live as a queer couple in the world and what you want out of your privacy and your public life," Tierney said." We’re just continuing to give Shane and Ilya the seriousness that this love affair deserves while also continuing to exist within the confines of the genre that we’re in, which I love. I want them to be happy, but I also want to show that that’s not easy. Because part of what Rachel does so brilliantly in her writing is to give queerness joy, but also not pretend the world isn’t the world. It’s not like she created this world where it’s like, there’s no homophobia and hockey’s amazing, and anyone can come out. No. She shows it’s difficult, takes courage, guts, and sacrifice, and takes stepping up and saying things with your full chest. And that to me is a triumph. That’s what we’re trying to do here."
"We didn’t expect any of this attention or reaction from a public that might not exist at all," Tierney reflected. "We’ve learned a lot [since the show aired], and there’s a lot to think about moving forward in terms of the fandom and all that comes with it, negative and positive."
Tierney shared that an overlooked piece of the show’s booming success, in addition to reaching the female, romance, and queer demographics, is that it stars a person of color. "We have a non-white lead. I think that’s fuckin’ important," he said. "We can learn a few lessons out of that: you don’t need to be making an Asian show to have an Asian lead. Hudson’s a fucking star, man."
