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Why HBO couldn't do much marketing for Heated Rivalry, according to showrunner Jacob Tierney: "Just be grateful there’s some horny people at HBO.”
Heated Rivalry showrunner Jacob Tierney explains why HBO didn't do more press for the episodes as they were airing during a BookCon 2026 panel.
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When a show becomes as big a hit as Heated Rivalry is, you expect the network to throw its weight behind it with a big marketing blitz to help let fans know what is coming. Hype is important for marketing, after all. But HBO didn’t seem to do anything to push Heated Rivalry while it was airing. That wasn’t because they didn’t believe in the show, though; it is because the show was being edited at such a remarkable pace that HBO often didn’t have anything to market until just days before an episode aired.
During a panel about the Heated Rivalry book and TV series at BookCon 2026, author Rachel Reid and showrunner Jacob Tierney explained why HBO didn’t seem to put out any marketing for the show ahead of time.
“We were picture locked late-September. I believe you watched those,” Tierney said to Reid on stage. “We sold the show mid-October… but there was no VFX, no music, no nothing. I mean, it was not mixed… So, we were still finishing. The amount of work we had to do on things like text messages and subtitles, and obviously songs and things like that. These shows were, back in the old days, we would call it a dripping wet print you’d hand to a theater because you’d be like, fucking processing the negative.”
How dripping are we talking about here? “Episode 6 was done 11 days before it aired,” Tierney confirms. “So, when people were like, ‘HBO, you’re not doing any press!’ I was like, ‘They did not have time!’ They did not even know what they had bought. Just be grateful there’s some horny people at HBO.”
Watch the full Heated Rivalry panel from BookCon 2026 here:
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