How Heated Rivalry nailed its Russian

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2026

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode of Science Quickly, hosts Kendra Pierre-Louis and Allison Parshall dive into the surprising linguistics behind the hit TV series Heated Rivalry. Pierre-Louis and Parshall speak with the show’s Russian dialect coach Kate Yablunovsky about how she helped actor Connor Storrie deliver impressively authentic Russian dialogue on a tight time line. Yablunovsky breaks down what the toughest Russian sounds are for English speakers, why perfect accents aren’t always the goal and how cultural context, mouth posture and psychology all shape believable performances. E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new everyday: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Kendra Pierre-Louis, Fonda Mwangi, Sushmita Pathak and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Philly Cheese Stack is back at McDonald's and it's still intensely cheesy.
0:04.0	Imagine the cheesiest thing ever. Now cover it in cheese.
0:06.0	Add two beef patties, cheddar cheese sauce, crispy onions and even more cheese.
0:10.0	The Philly Cheese Stack.
0:12.0	Did we mention it's cheesy?
0:14.0	Available until the 16th of March, 2026 from 11 AM.
0:17.0	Fees apply to delivery orders.
0:18.0	Price and participation may vary. Subjects availability. For Scientific American Science quickly, I'm Kendra Pira-Lier Lewis, in for Rachel Feldman.
0:46.6	So I have a confession that I need to get off my chest, and I'm bringing in my friend Siam's very own Alison Parcial to help. What is it, Kendra? I'm obsessed with the TV show
0:52.4	heated rivalry. Wait, me too. The romance, the hockey, the tension.
0:57.5	So good. The yearning. The Russian, I mean, one of the things that both you and I have talked about so much is how the American actor, Connor Story, who co-starred as the Russian character, Ilya Rosenov, pulled off speaking so much Russian and perfected his accent.
1:11.6	Yeah, it was shocking.
1:13.6	And to help us understand the linguistics behind the hit TV show, we talked to Heated Rivalry's Russian dialect coach, Kate Yabunovsky.
1:21.6	Thank you for joining us today.
1:22.6	Thank you so much for having me.
1:24.6	Can you tell us a little bit more about dialect coaching?
1:26.6	Like, what is it and how did you get into doing this work?
1:30.3	Well, dialect coaching, I specialize specifically in Russian, Russian, Ukrainian.
1:35.9	And it's about preparing an actor to speak with as much of an authentic accent, which
1:43.2	it's not always what it sounds like. It's not always just
1:46.9	to be authentic. Sometimes, actually, it's the opposite. Sometimes it's to take the perfection
1:52.2	out of the accent so that the character feels authentic. This is something that I got into
	...

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