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Inside ‘Off Campus’ Breakout Mika Abdalla’s Roller Coaster Debut as Allie Hayes
All the world’s a stage? More like Allie Hayes’ world is the stage, and the characters of Off Campus are merely players.
“Allie’s me when I’m having the best day of my life, or when I’ve just had a Red Bull or three or four coffees or whatever,” Mika Abdalla tells Swooon. “Allie’s me when I’m with my favorite people, having the time of my life.”
When we met the actress on the eve of the Off Campus Season 1 premiere on May 13, the Prime Video romance series (and Abdalla’s character) hadn’t yet taken over the internet. The Allie fan edits weren’t flooding social media feeds like they are now. Fans hadn’t started copying Allie’s haircut or channeling her style. Jennifer Lopez hadn’t given Allie and Dean’s (Stephen Kalyn) now-iconic “On the Floor” dance sequence her stamp of approval yet.
In just a week, Abdalla and the rest of the Off Campus cast went from rising stars to TV’s hottest starting line.
Introducing Allie Hayes
Abdalla originally set her sights on playing Hannah (Ella Bright), since Off Campus was only requesting tapes for the two lead roles at the start. Season 1 primarily follows Garrett (Belmont Cameli) and Hannah’s The Deal storyline — the show is based on Elle Kennedy’s bestselling college hockey romance books — but Abdalla knew right away that Hannah wasn’t a fit for her.
The 26-year-old actress was aware of Kennedy’s books but hadn’t read them before the role got on her radar. “I wasn’t familiar with the whole BookTok situation yet,” she says. “As soon as I got the original audition, I read The Deal, and then when I got into the callback chemistry process, I needed to learn more about Allie, so then I read The Score.”
In The Deal, Allie is introduced as Hannah’s roommate. Like she is in the show, Allie’s an outgoing and confident aspiring actress. She’s also a supportive and loyal friend to Hannah. Allie encourages Hannah to put herself out there, whether that means going to a party or talking to her crush. Allie doesn’t take center stage until she becomes the main character two books later in The Score, but Off Campus decided to give Allie plenty of spotlight in the first season.
Season 1 switches things up by blending some plot points of The Score with The Deal. There were a few ways the show wanted to expand on Allie’s character from the book, which Abdalla discussed with showrunners Louisa Levy and Gina Fattore. “I think Allie’s relationship with her family is extremely important, and obviously, we can’t really get there yet in this season,” Abdalla notes. “But we’ve already been talking about Allie’s relationship with her family, and her love for her family really informs a lot of the decisions that she makes about other relationships in her life.”
While Abdalla was excited to immerse herself in Allie’s effervescence, the actress knows the deeper details that her character has pushed down. “Allie does have this larger-than-life personality, but it’s almost like a mask for her extremely vulnerable and sensitive inner core,” she says. “So I think it was just finding a way to develop that inner core, and those inner insecurities and fears and doubts and whatever, and then letting that kind of bubble underneath in these moments of joy and party and fun.”
‘You Are Everything‘
Though Allie keeps her hookups with Dean a secret, Allie doesn’t hesitate to let down her walls around Hannah over the course of Season 1. While their romantic entanglements play out, Allie and Hannah’s friendship holds firm through it all. Abdalla is thankful that their relationship is such a prominent part of the story, since friendships like theirs are so important at that stage in young adulthood.
“It’s so sisterly. It seems like they grew up together almost, and I think that’s just because of the love that Ella and I have for each other,” Abdalla explains. “We feel the same way about each other that our characters feel about each other, and if you’ve ever seen us interact in person, it’s like we’re just the same.”
While a fair portion of young adult-focused shows tend to pit female friends against each other at one point or another, that’s never the case with Hannah and Allie in Season 1. “I don’t think they need to [fight],” Abdalla replies when we point that out. “Ella’s one of my best friends. I’ve never fought her on anything. I think they set a good example for what you should want from your friendships when you’re going to college and meeting new people and deciding who you want to keep as part of your life.”
Viewers see how Allie helps bring Hannah out of her shell, but Hannah also brings out another side of Allie. “Hannah forces Allie to touch base with that emotional inner core of hers,” Abdalla points out. “Without Hannah, Allie would just be bouncing around like an insane person all the time, and Hannah grounds her.”
Photographer: Avery Thompson
Abdalla agreed that it was important for Allie and Hannah’s love story to develop before Allie fully embraces her romance from the pages of The Score. “Allie’s relationship with Hannah is such a core problem in her relationship with Dean, eventually,” she noted. “And so I think, without establishing how important this relationship is to her, then you might lose the stakes when it comes to the season that Allie and Dean are supposed to be together.”
Part of Allie’s reasoning for (albeit temporarily) ending her hookups with Dean is that she doesn’t want to make Hannah’s new relationship with Garrett about her. Allie shows how deeply she cares for her friend again in the finale episode, when Hannah tells her that she was drugged and raped in high school. Allie informs her that she’s always known and knew Hannah would tell her about it when she was ready.
“I just think that shows that Allie knows what people need when they’re dealing with heavy emotions,” Abdalla says of that moment. “She knows it. It doesn’t really benefit Hannah to know that she knows. There’s no reason for it to be talked about if Hannah’s not comfortable… I feel like she is comfortable taking a back seat until Hannah’s ready to come to her, and at the bottom line, Allie’s top concern is Hannah’s comfort and happiness, so she’s just going to do whatever makes her comfortable.”
Hannah explains that she hasn’t been able to write song lyrics since the assault. “I didn’t want to be the girl who was raped,” she says to Allie. “I want to be this girl. The girl who wrote this song [from high school].” Allie tells Hannah that she is that girl. “And all the girls in between, because you’re not just one thing, babe. You’re everything.”
That moving conversation was Abdalla and Bright’s chemistry read scene. Filming it for the show was emotional — “we were sobbing in the rehearsal” — for many reasons. “It was so nostalgic, just from meeting Ella for the first time and not knowing her, and not knowing how close we would become, and how much our lives would change,” Abdalla recalls.
Smooth Moves and Fire Pit Confessions
Though Allie tries her best to keep Dean at arm’s length for a multitude of reasons — from Hannah’s new relationship to her recent breakup with longtime boyfriend, Sean (Riley Davis) — they’re drawn into each other’s orbits from that first meeting on the dance floor. In Episode 2, Dean spots Allie dancing on her own in the middle of his birthday party. Allie wears a replica of JLo’s iconic green Versace dress to the fête. When Dean makes his move, Allie indulges him a bit before putting a stop to their dance.
That charged interaction is entirely original to the show, giving Dean and Allie a little more history before their hookups start. “I just think it’s the perfect introduction to what it is Allie loves about Dean,” Abdalla says of the book change. “She’s coming in with Sean, and he’s perfectly fine and whatever, but she sees this guy that’s… I don’t know, it’s just there’s just something there.”
Abdalla continues, “I think it’s a really fun way to kind of showcase who they both are as people and why it brings them together. Dean loves women, and so he sees Allie dancing, and he’s like, ‘I gotta go talk to that girl.’ And Allie’s just like in her own world and wants to have fun, and those two energies are obviously going to attract each other.”
Part of what Abdalla and Kalyn had to do was get instructions from a choreographer the day before shooting. Abdalla previously told Swooon that there was an extra minute of footage that didn’t make it into the final cut. “What was in that minute was me doing a lot of this,” she says, voguing, “And them being like, ‘It’s enough with the arms.'” (She has a video of the two of them practicing, but doesn’t plan to share it.)
Allie and Dean dance around each other more at Episode 3’s karaoke night, which leads to a drunken Allie winding up at the hockey house. In the middle of the night, Allie and Dean find themselves at the outdoor fire pit, where they have a surprising heart-to-heart. Dean offers Allie a ride on his “Six Flags” sex roller coaster, of course, but he also encourages Allie to drop her unsupportive boyfriend and follow her dreams. Right away, Allie questions if Dean is as comfortable with his “Six Flags” approach to dating as he lets on.
Photography Credit: Prime Video / Graphic Design: Rebecca Perlmutter
“Allie’s an actor. She’s emotionally aware of people and their fronts, and I think Dean is being pretty vulnerable with Allie there,” Abdalla shares. “I think Stephen gives also a fantastic layered performance, and he’s dropping the hints that you know there’s maybe something going on underneath that.”
Abdalla reveals that the fire pit scene was “the first scene that Stephen and I filmed together, which I thought was really fantastic planning because it just felt really natural and easy, and it’s one of my favorite scenes that we have.”
Dean’s prediction that Allie’s going to break up with Sean is spot on. Allie is still processing it during the Briar U’s drama department’s Drunk Shakespeare event. Afterward, the roller coaster-loving Allie calls Dean and takes him up on his casual hookups offer. This leads to Dean and Allie spending Thanksgiving together in New York.
“I think that’s crossing some kind of boundary into a new realm of their relationship,” Abdalla explained. “She’s going to his family home, and it’s just the two of them, and it’s not like a sneaky hookup on campus. They’re in a different city, and she’s learning about his family and his life. And they’re sitting there playing chess, and he really gets vulnerable with her, and absolutely, in my mind, that was always when alarm bells go off, and she’s like, ‘I really like you, and I’m in a relationship again.'”
The aftermath of the hockey crew’s call that interrupts Dean and Allie — when Allie decides to temporarily stop seeing Dean — was Abdalla and Kalyn’s chemistry read scene. “There might have been little pieces from the fire pit scene thrown in there, too. It was almost like a marriage between the two,” she explains.
Dean’s persistent about resuming their situationship, and Allie changes her stance before long. But in an effort to keep things casual, she gives them each “homework” to sleep with other people. Dean can’t get it up with another girl, which makes him realize he has deeper feelings for Allie. But everything falls apart just as he’s telling her as much. Allie followed through by sleeping with Hunter Davenport (Charlie Evans), unaware that Dean and Hunter hate each other.
“I think Allie takes people for their word a lot, and so maybe subconsciously she has an inkling [that Dean had feelings for her],” Abdalla says. “She’s in a confused place [when he confesses]. She’s just probably not as in tune with what’s going on as she typically would be. It’s her biggest fear, what happens in the end.”
Allie and Dean’s Next Chapter
The Hunter revelation, which prompts Dean to start a fight with Hunter, is right where Season 1 ends and where Season 2 will pick up. “Hannah jumps in and wins the fight, or Allie could,” Abdalla quips. “We knock them all out.”
Photographer: Avery Thompson
Jokes aside, Abdalla has already read the first script of Season 2, which was completed shortly ahead of Season 1’s premiere. The leading couple is being kept under wraps for now — it could be The Mistake‘s Logan (Antonio Cipriano) and Grace (India Fowler) or Dean and Allie. Either way, Abdalla says that the Hunter twist “slows them down a little bit and introduces a little more drama.”
Allie’s been holding herself back from connecting with the rest of the friend group, too, but that may change going forward. “I’m excited to hang out with my friends,” Abdalla says of filming Season 2. “Ella got to go to set and hang out with all of everybody all the time, and I didn’t, so I am excited selfishly to like have more days on set with the boys.” She’s also more than ready to “dig into Allie’s acting side a little bit more.”
There’s also, of course, the Dean of it all. Though he was ready to start a relationship with her, Allie hasn’t really allowed him to see the complete version of her yet. “He doesn’t know anything about her, really,” Abdalla admits. “But I also don’t really feel like Hannah even knows that much about her. I think there’s this really deeply emotional part of Allie that she doesn’t talk about, so hopefully we get to cover that.”
