Exclusive Interview
‘Off Campus’ Stars on How Hannah & Garrett ‘Challenge’ Each Other in Season 1 (VIDEO)
What To Know
- Prime Video’s adaptation of Elle Kennedy’s Off Campus series centers on music major Hannah and hockey captain Garrett.
- Actors Ella Bright and Belmont Cameli preview Hannah and Garrett’s relationship and growth over the course of Season 1.
- Showrunner Louisa Levy shares insights into Season 1 and casting Bright and Cameli.
Since it began over a decade ago, Elle Kennedy’s Off Campus book series has become a staple of the hockey romance genre. It all started with The Deal‘s Hannah Wells (Ella Bright) and Garrett Graham (Belmont Cameli), who will take center stage — or ice — in Prime Video’s TV show adaptation.
Ahead of the May 13 premiere of Off Campus, Bright and Cameli sat down with Swooon to preview Hannah and Garrett’s love story in Season 1. A relationship seems “unlikely” at first because Hannah is an introverted music major, while Garrett’s the hotshot captain of Briar University’s hockey team.
When they first meet, Hannah is stretched thin by school and work. Garrett approaches her about philosophy tutoring — he doesn’t remember her name, which isn’t a great selling point — but she turns him down. But Garrett needs to pass the class to keep playing hockey, which is the most important thing in his life, so he gets to work convincing Hannah. It’s just one example of how Garrett’s stuck “in the cogs of his own machine,” as Cameli put it, when we first meet him.
“He’s created control over all aspects of his life,” Cameli explained. “He has a plan in mind, and all he really does is work to serve that plan. I don’t really think that he’s been in love romantically, so the problems that arise when he eventually is [in love] haven’t affected him yet. He’s got a f**king grindset. He wakes up, and he plays hockey, and he takes care of all the other things in his life he needs to do to make sure that he can keep playing hockey. When he meets Hannah, it opens up a lot for him.”
The ever-persistent Garrett offers Hannah a deal: tutoring in exchange for faking a relationship. Hannah agrees in order to get the attention of her crush (Josh Heuston). Hannah and Garrett match each other’s snarky energy right away, and it doesn’t take too long for them to form an unexpected friendship. “I loved their fun banter from the very beginning,” Bright said of what compelled her about their dynamic. “They start as friends, and they have this challenging each other aspect to their relationship, which is really fun.”
But light-hearted, rom-com-esque banter isn’t all Hannah and Garrett have to offer, as readers of the book know. As they get to know each other, the trust between them builds, Bright teased. “These conversations that they have about really hard aspects of their lives that they might not be able to have with other people is really beautiful to see unfold,” she noted. “It was a really gorgeous story that we got to tell.”
Prime Video
“They’re friends first, and that’s usually really fertile soil for a relationship,” Cameli added. “So that was a nice aspect of it that excited me. It’s fun to go from friends to them discovering, ‘Oh s**t, I think I’m in love with them.’”
Even before their relationship takes a romantic turn, Hannah opens up to Garrett about a traumatic experience in high school. “She’s dealt with things in the way that she thinks is best, even though there are some holes in that process that I think she’s compartmentalized, and she’s shut down some parts of herself,” Bright said of Hannah’s mindset at the beginning of the season. “She’s found a way where she’s not defined by what’s happened to her. She’s confident in the situation that she’s in, and she’s comfortable.”
She continued, “When they meet each other, there is a level of trust, and these things that she hasn’t been able to explore with other people that she’s discovering about herself.” Viewers will go on a learning experience alongside the characters, Bright revealed.
Cameli pointed out that Hannah and Garrett “haven’t been challenged in the way that they need to grow yet completely, and it comes from the other person” over the course of the show. Off Campus has that in common with its source material. Showrunner Louisa Levy told Swooon that Off Campus is “doing [its] best to stay true to the books and the spirit of the books.”
In turning a 300-page book into an eight-episode TV show, Levy said, “There are certain things that have to change because we don’t have the benefit of being inside the characters’ heads the way you do in a novel. So, our North Star was always, ‘Does it feel like it honors the books?’ And whenever the answer was yes, we felt like that was the right choice.”
When it came to casting Season 1’s leads, Levy was confident that Bright and Cameli were the right choice to bring the characters to life. “Ella just felt perfect from jump,” she explained. “We just felt like she fell out of the book. And actually, we didn’t audition Belmont originally. We just met with him, my co-showrunner Gina [Fattore] and I, and he asked all the right questions. He just felt like Garrett Graham.”
Cameli’s understanding of his character helped him land the part, but seeing him in action next to Bright is what did it. “We were really hoping that when he showed up to our chemistry reads, that he delivered, and he did,” Levy continued. “We put them in a room together, and sparks flew.”
Off Campus, Season 1, May 13, Prime Video
