Ksenia Daniela Kharlamova is learning in real time what it means to be attached to a hit. On The Wayne Ayers Podcast, the Toronto-born performer spoke candidly about her upbringing across continents, her Russian-language work as Svetlana on the hockey romance series “Heated Rivalry,” and the very specific, very funny ways fame travels, including straight onto a streetcar with her mother.
“You know what? Yeah,” Kharlamova said when asked if she ever thanks her parents for her name. “I think my mom did a good job. She picked like a good combination of names.”
That mix of identities is not just branding for her. It is a biography.
“Yeah, I mean, I grew up between Toronto and St. Petersburg, and then I lived in Seattle for a couple of years, too,” she said. “So I’ve been like all around, but … I really value the fact that I grew up in so many different places. I feel like it gives me a different perspective on a lot of things.”
For Kharlamova, language is part of that perspective. “Even speaking another language, it opens you up to so many more people,” she said, adding that beyond English and Russian, she mostly understands “some languages that have like a Slavic root,” plus “a little bit of Ukrainian.”
“Hopefully one day I’ll do like an Italian or a French,” she said. “Maybe I’ll learn one day.”
Her childhood in Russia also included an unexpected detour into circus training.
“Yeah, I was in like a circus club,” Kharlamova said, describing it as a kind of youth clubhouse where kids could join everything from robotics to animal care. “You could do circus club, and I did that one, and it was … a lot of fun. It was a lot of movements you would never do.”
Seattle still sits warmly in her memory, too.
“Oh, I love it,” she said. “Seattle has like almost a Canadian vibe, almost, because I think it’s so close to Canada … it kind of feels like an extension of Vancouver in a way.” She paused, then went full postcard. “It’s so beautiful. I mean, the ocean and the mountains and the trees and the forest … it’s such a stunning place.”
Then there is Trinidad and Tobago, where her father is from, and where she has not been yet.
“My dad’s from Trinidad in Tobago. I’ve never been. I’ve always wanted to go,” she said. “Hopefully, I can go sometime in the next couple of years. It looks like such a beautiful place.”
Toronto has helped keep her connected. “We have a lot of Caribbean people here,” she said. “So you’re never lacking in the culture here in that aspect, you know, the food, the music, the festivals … you’re always connected to the culture here.”
She also shared a personal detail that made her desire to go feel more intimate than aspirational. “I think my grandfather was a poet there and stuff, and I would really love to go back and … pay homage to all that,” she said.
Even Toronto’s signature festival has remained a “not yet” for her.
“You know what? I have actually never been,” she said of Caribana. “I’m OK with crowds, but I’m not the best. I find it just like overstimulating.” Still, she knows she will eventually have to face it. “It’s a Toronto thing that you have to do,” she said. “So I will go one day.”
A breakout role that speaks in Russian
Kharlamova’s visibility has surged with “Heated Rivalry,” where her character, Svetlana, is close to Russian hockey star Ilya “Roz” Rozanov. Her Russian dialogue did not require reinvention because it was already her life.
“We grew up speaking Russian like at home,” she said. Her mother’s reaction to hearing it on screen was not shock so much as motherly critique. Kharlamova said her mom teased her by saying, “You know what, your accent … your accent’s getting a little … you’re getting a little bit of English accent there.” Kharlamova’s response: “I’m like, no, I’m not.” Then she added, “She’s just teasing.”
The show’s popularity reached her family in a quietly cinematic way. Kharlamova said her mother recently told her she had been talking with “a young lady” on public transit about the series.
“My mom did I don’t think my mom knows how big it is,” she said. “She was just … like, ‘Oh yeah, my daughter’s like on this hockey show, like whatever.’ And she’s like, ‘Wait, who’s your daughter?’ And she’s like, ‘Oh my god, it’s her whatever.’” Kharlamova called the fan’s excitement “cool.”
On set, she said co-star Connor did not need her help with Russian because he had already put in the work.
“One time when I first met him … we rehearsed some of the scenes like in the lobby together,” she said. “But by that point … I was like, ‘You got it this down.’ Like him and the dialect coach … they worked really hard and he did such a great job.”
No table read, no warmup, straight into the emotion
Kharlamova said there was no traditional table read for the production. “We didn’t have a table read,” she said. “Everything happened really fast.”
Instead, the cast met just before filming began. “We met at a dinner … a couple days before we started shooting and then we started shooting,” she said.
Asked how she shaped Svetlana in that environment, Kharlamova emphasized that even when a show is based on a book, performance is still personal.
“An actor brings so much to the part,” she said. “I feel like every actor brings something from themselves. So like I brought, you know, my own vibe to the character.”
If she needed clarity, she asked for it. “If I wasn’t certain about … the undercurrent of the scene … I just ask,” she said. “You don’t have to be shy about those things.”
She also came prepared with a visual blueprint. “I came in with like Pinterest boards for what I wanted to do with the hair and the makeup,” she said, adding that she had “a little bit of a say in the clothing … that the character wears.”
Svetlana and Ilya, loyalty without romance
Kharlamova described Svetlana as “an emotional anchor” for Ilya and as a tether to home. She highlighted a key change from the books that she felt deepened that bond.
“In the books, they actually meet as adults in America,” she said. “But I loved how in the TV show it was … they were childhood friends.”
One of her favorite sequences was a confrontation where Svetlana steps between Ilya and his brother. Kharlamova said it was also her first day filming.
“That was one of my favorite scenes of the whole show, actually,” she said. “That was actually the first thing I filmed.”
She recalled waiting off-camera as the argument played out. “They would do like the whole take at a time,” she said. “So I would be like waiting in the other room while they were arguing, and I would come in and break it up.”
The acting in the scene made it feel real. “I remember like actually feeling nervous,” she said. “Because they were fighting and like I actually felt like a sense of like unease and tension.”
What the moment revealed, she said, was Svetlana’s fearlessness. “I loved that the character stood up for him,” she said. “It showed like how close they are.”
And she is not intimidated by the brother. “She’s like, ‘Yeah, whatever,’” Kharlamova said. “She’s not intimidated by him.”
More broadly, she connected the friendship to a kind of realism that grounds the show’s romance.
“Friends are often the people who are there for you the most throughout your life,” she said. “And I thought that was really beautiful.”
When asked whether Svetlana sees Ilya’s family trauma as something to heal, Kharlamova leaned into acceptance as its own form of care.
“I think you kind of accept people’s traumas,” she said. “You don’t always try to like heal them per se, but you just accept them as they are.” She added, “Acceptance and community I think is also a part of healing.”
On fan speculation that Svetlana may already know about Ilya and Shane, Kharlamova was careful but telling.
“As a viewer, I do think that she knows,” she said. “I think she’s a very smart character.” She pointed to the on-screen hints. “She dropped a lot of hints throughout Season 1.”
As for how things might change if the central couple goes public, she said she simply wants the bond to remain.
“I just hope that she’s there for him and they’re still friends,” she said. “Because I think they have such like a nice bond in the TV show.”
She also sounded genuinely excited about Svetlana meeting Shane.
“I think it would be really, really funny,” she said, imagining Shane as “a little neurotic … a little awkward.” Then she made her case for compatibility. “They’re actually both hockey nerds,” she said. “So I think they actually really like each other.”
A superhero pitch, delivered like a producer’s spreadsheet
Kharlamova also discussed her interest in playing Starfire in a DC film, tracing her interest back to animation rather than comics.
“Before the comics, I would say like the animated TV show,” she said, referencing the early 2000s “Teen Titans” era. “I think she’s such a cool character.”
Then she corrected herself mid-thought and chose confidence. “I’m going to bash for myself,” she said. “I do think I’d be a good Starfire if they ever need one.”
Her pitch to James Gunn was half-earnest, half-hilariously practical.
“You wouldn’t have to do too much special effects on me,” she said. “My hair is already like I’ve had red hair, I’ve had orange hair, I’ve had ginger hair, so I’m down with any type of hair dye.” She added, “I already have green eyes.”
And yes, she went there. “I could save money on set. I could save money in post-production,” she said.
Kharlamova also pushed back on height skepticism. “I’m 5’8,” and in like the actor’s world, that is pretty tall for a girl,” she said.
She connected personally to Starfire’s outsider vibe. “I love how she’s like so awkward on Earth, and she doesn’t understand Earth customs,” she said. “I kind of can relate to that because I grew up in so many different places, and sometimes I feel like a little bit of an alien wherever I am.”
She is even training. “I’ve been hitting the gym, too,” she said.
No biopics, yes to horror, action, and Canadian indie
Kharlamova said she would love to play “a spy,” even name-checking the appeal of James Bond-style work. “If you ever need someone who speaks Russian and looks good in a dress and maybe kicks… do some runs, I can do that,” she said. “I can be mysterious.”
But biopics are a firm boundary. “That is like hands off,” she said. “I would never ever want to do that.” Why? “It’s too much pressure for me mentally to play someone who was or is a real person.”
Outside acting, she said she hopes to write and direct. “I would really love to make my own short film,” she said. “I really love writing.”
She also mentioned a side project, “The Pretenders Podcast,” which she co-hosts with her friend Sierra. “We talk about pop culture … video games … anime … we talk about everything,” she said, adding that they sometimes discuss acting because “the industry is a little secretive.”
And she wants to help strengthen Canadian film culture. “I’m super super passionate about the Canadian arts,” she said, arguing that Canada can become “overdependent on the U.S. productions coming here and filming here.”
“I would love to … work in the States,” she said, “but then I’d also love to come back home to Canada and make … more indie movies, more art-driven movies here locally.”
“Wrong century,” she says, and she is not laughing anymore
When asked what fans may not know about her, Kharlamova did not give a quirky hobby. She gave a correction.
“People keep saying online that I was born in 1993,” she said. “I was born in 2002.”
She has seen the posts. “People keep saying that I am in my 30s. I am not in my 30s,” she said. “I keep seeing tweets about people saying like, ‘Oh, she looks so good for 30.’ I’m not 30. I’m 23 years old.”
She clarified she is not shading anyone’s age. “30 isn’t even old,” she said. “I’m just saying, like I don’t want to be aged a decade. Like I just got here, guys.”
A thank you to the fans, and a request
Kharlamova ended with gratitude for the audience that turned “Heated Rivalry” into something bigger than a niche.
“Thank you for supporting the show and for literally blowing it up,” she said. “Like, actually like internationally, worldwide.”
She also asked viewers to keep their attention wide, not just fixed on a ship.
“I hope people do keep supporting us individually as actors as well,” she said. “Everyone on the cast is so talented … I really see like a big long career for all of them.”
And she is already looking ahead.
“I hope they like Season 2 as much as they like Season 1,” she said, “whenever that is filmed and aired.”
