Off Campus creator Louisa Levy broke her silence on the criticism surrounding the cast’s age differences.
Levy was recently asked by Variety about Ella Bright joining the show as Hannah at age 18, to which she replied, “I had a conversation with Ella before we closed her deal to make sure she knew what was coming. She’d read the book, so she already understood, but I walked her through everything and made sure she was comfortable and confident.”
The screenwriter acknowledged that Bright, now 19, had a nearly nine-year age gap with onscreen love interest Belmont Cameli, now 28.
“If I had felt she wasn’t ready, I would have pumped the brakes immediately. But she was so game,” Levy continued. “And we have an extraordinary intimacy coordinator, Kathy Kadler, who had conversations with not just Belmont and Ella but with all the actors who had any intimacy work.”
Levy added: “[It was about] really understanding what made everyone comfortable, what they felt good about, what they didn’t. We never did anything that made anyone uncomfortable before we ever rolled a frame of camera.”
Levy also defended making some of the guys older than the others, which was a change from the books.
“Each season is a semester, so two seasons covers a full year — slowing down that timeline opens things up considerably,” she explained. “The biggest change was Tucker being younger rather than the oldest, because he’s the last book, and we need to make sure he’s still at Briar by the time we get there. It’s also just about building a cohesive group where everyone has their role.”
John Tucker (Jalen Thomas Brooks), Garrett Graham (Belmont Cameli), Hannah Wells (Ella Bright), Dean Di Laurentis (Stephen Thomas Kalyn) and John Logan (Antonio Cipriano) in ‘Off Campus.’ Liane Hentscher / Prime
Based on the Off-Campus book series by Elle Kennedy, the show follows an elite ice hockey team and the women in their lives as they “grapple with love, heartbreak and self-discovery — forging deep friendships and enduring bonds while navigating the complexities that come with transitioning into adulthood,” read the official synopsis.
Hannah (Bright) and Garrett’s (Cameli) love story took center stage in season 1 — with several key moments from their book, The Deal, swapped for an updated version. At the same time, the show set up Allie (Mika Abdalla) and Dean (Stephen Kalyn) as the next possible leads despite them being featured in the third book in the series.
“It’s definitely great to have the blueprint of this fabulous book series to start with, but adapting for a TV show is a little bit different,” Levy told Us. “We need to keep the audience’s focus in a different way.”
Levy broke down the approach from page to screen.
“We have a lot of stories told in different ways. We have eight episodes instead of the whole book,” she noted. “So we really started with the things that were super nonnegotiable — that without those things it wouldn’t be Off Campus.”
She continued: “From there, we added as many of the book moments as we could. We dropped them in like Easter eggs, and we just really spent time taking one’s inside character and externalizing them.”
Off Campus is currently streaming on Prime Video.
