While Prime Video’s Off Campus certainly took liberties as a TV adaptation, showrunner Louisa Levy was insistent on recreating the biggest literary moments.
“I know the fans, because of the trailer, might be thinking we’re not diving into the sexual assault backstory, [but] that was a nonnegotiable,” Levy said on the Thursday, May 14, episode of the “Off the Shelf” podcast. “There was no world where I was going to let that go. That’s a key thing that makes this book different and special is how Elle [Kennedy] did that.
Off Campus was adapted from Kennedy’s bestselling hockey romance series of the same name, in which each book follows one of four collegiate athletes as they find love. The first season of the Prime Video series was inspired by The Deal, in which Briar University hockey captain Garrett Graham (Belmont Cameli) starts fake dating Hannah Wells (Ella Bright) before feelings turn real. In both the book and show, Hannah is navigating lingering trauma after she was sexually assaulted in high school.
“Hannah is a character who, despite this darker [and] heavier backstory, is so light and bubbly and optimistic,” Levy said. “That’s what I fell in love with about her, and I think without the darkness, the lightness and bubbliness would feel flat or just less interesting.”
In addition to maintaining Hannah’s past, Levy did not want to cut Garrett’s own childhood history with abuse.
“That also can’t be dropped because that’s part of what makes them perfect for each other,” Levy said. “You learn about Hannah’s backstory on, like, page one of the book. We don’t learn [about it] that early on the show because … I didn’t want Hannah to be defined by that because Hannah doesn’t want to be defined by that.”
She continued, “In a book you can get into her head and understand that she doesn’t want to be defined by that, but the second you put that on the table on TV, the character’s defined by that even if she says she doesn’t want to be. We made that, in the writer’s room, part of her arc that she chose not to tell anybody and because she chose not to tell anybody … and the people closest to her at school don’t know this about her. By not knowing, that’s defining her.”
Levy also made sure to replicate the level of steamy scenes that book fans have come to know very well.
“It’s so crucial to their story,” she stated. “Not only is that what makes the book so fun to read … but it’s so crucial for Hannah’s character journey. Like, it is baked in. That’s frankly uncommon, and a lot of romance novels have sex as a component but not part of a character arc. Elle made it part of her character arc, [which] was another reason I got so excited about these books is that it is necessary.”
Off Campus has already been renewed for a second season, during which either Dean (Stephen Kalyn), Logan (Antonio Cipriano) or Tucker (Jalen Thomas Brooks) will take the lead with their respective love interests, Allie (Mika Abdalla), Grace (India Fowler) and Sabrina.
Off Campus is now streaming on Prime Video.
