SPOILER ALERT! This piece spoils the entirety of Off Campus Season 1 on Prime Video.
Editor’s Note: Trigger & Content Warning – This piece also mentions rape and physical abuse as part of the main characters’ storylines.
The first season of Prime Video’s Off Campus follows a fake dating bargain between Garrett Graham (Belmont Cameli) and Hannah Wells (Ella Bright), and, as with most literary bargains of this nature, the romance becomes real.
The singer songwriter and star hockey player make their arrangement after Garrett asks Hannah to tutor him in their philosophy class to boost his grade. He offers to act like she’s his girlfriend so that she can get the attention of the singer songwriter she has a crush on, Justin Kohl (Josh Heuston). The forced proximity between the pair combines gives way to two big connections that help them realize they have what it takes to be in a real romantic relationship.
“The first moment [was], ‘How can you show [that] two people, who are so different, maybe have common ground?’ Music is talked about a lot in the books, and we do our best to honor that, while also updating it over a decade later. Hannah is described in the books as having very eclectic musical taste,” Levy told Deadline. “I was really curious to see how her musical taste can overlap with Garrett’s, but also finding the pulse of these characters through music — whether it’s their actual taste or the music that we’re playing to score their lives — is a very big part of the show.”
The couple also come to bond over their past trauma and struggles in a way where they comfort each other about them and move forward from what happened to them. Supporting each other through vocalizing their backstories makes their bond stronger.
“[Hannah] mentions [what happened to her] in the book very early, so it’s not a secret, but it’s easier for it not to define you when you get that inner monologue, whereas in a TV show, if you say it in the first episode, it becomes the thing that defines that character,” Levy added. “I wanted it to not be the thing that defines her, if you don’t know, and also to make sure that it doesn’t feel like a big, splashy reveal. What it does for the Garrett-Hannah relationship, is now both of these characters have a thing that they don’t want to define them, but that they keep a secret, and in the very nature of keeping it a secret, it defines them.”
Hannah and Garrett both open up about their pasts individually to other people after finding safe space in each other. And though Phil Graham’s (Steve Howey) involvement in the third act disconnect between Hannah and Garrett is different in the show, Levy assures readers that it could come back up later.
“We don’t tie everything up tidily in a bow. We never know when we might circle back to something,” she said. “If anything is not resolved in a tidy bow the way book bands might want, don’t worry, we are a TV show. Hopefully we’ll have the opportunity to do that if we get enough seasons.”
In the below interview, Levy talks her approach to adapting the hit novels, hints at what to expect in season two, discusses major musical moments and more.
DEADLINE: Did you always want to start the way the books start with Garrett and Hannah and The Deal story for Season 1? Did you consider starting with any other couples?
LOUISA LEVY: No, I didn’t, because [with] The Deal, there’s a reason why it’s the beginning in the book series, and it was the first book I read in the series. It’s the first book I think most people read in the series, and Hannah and Garrett are just such a great couple to come in with. I love each of the couples for their own reasons, but I think Hannah and Garrett are the OG so it felt like the right place to start.
DEADLINE: Stepping back a bit, what made you say yes to this project? Did you talk to Elle Kennedy? I’m curious how you arrived at it.
LEVY: I actually didn’t talk to Elle Kennedy before signing on to this project, mostly because it was right before the writers’ strike, and it was all quite rushed, so it was a chaotic time. While it would have been wonderful to chat with her beforehand, I didn’t, because I didn’t know if we were going to close a deal before the strike. I didn’t know what was going to happen.
I pitched it to Temple Hill. I pitched it to Amazon. The property was already set up at both places, so it was really just me pitching my take and why I should be the one writing it. And we closed the deal a few days before — The Deal — a few days before the writers’ strike started, and then I wasn’t allowed to work on it, so I wouldn’t have been allowed to talk to Elle Kennedy either.
I got excited about it, and then I had to sit on my hands for a few months. And then once, once we came back, I was very excited to dive in and write the pilot. So I finally was able to get in touch with Elle, once the writers room had actually started, and we had a really lovely, long conversation, and we got to share what our plans were for the season. It was wonderful.
DEADLINE: Could you summarize your take or how you pitched it?
LEVY: A big part of my pitch was just how much I love romance novels and romance. It was a big part, a formative part of my experience growing up, and also loving the college age and the college era and how this is such a special time in your life. I look back on my college experiences so fondly, but it’s the thing that I’ve always gravitated towards, especially for why this book series should be a TV show, is because that is such a critical time in our lives when we’re no longer in the world of our parents, we’re no longer children, but we’re not yet fully adults living in the real world. We’re in this kind of magical bubble. It’s a perfect bubble for a TV show.
It’s also centered around figuring out who you want to fall in love with and who you want to maybe spend the rest of your life with, figuring out who your best friends are — because it’s a romance, but it’s also a friendship story. Some of my favorite things about these characters is the friendships that form separate from the romances, and that also felt ripe for TV adaptation.
On top of that, I was really interested in — the books are written alternating POV, Garrett’s POV, Hannah’s POV, and all of the books are written that way, once you get into the other books in the series as well. I really love being able to drop into characters heads, but of course, the fun challenge for being a TV show is you can’t in the same way that you can in a novel. I was very excited and interested in, ‘How do I drop into Hannah’s POV?’ Because Hannah does not like Garrett when she first meets him. So I was really interested in seeing, ‘How does she see this guy?’ And it’s not particularly favorable. And then, ‘How does he see her?’ And it’s not particularly accurate. Being able to follow each of their POVs as they get to know each other and become friends first and then eventually fall in love was exciting.
DEADLINE: How did you want to unite their characters through music and navigate that? There’s Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself” in the pilot and then a Mazzy Star song in the finale.
LEVY: That was the other reason why I was really excited about this particular book and couple to start off with, is, I’ve always been very musical, and this show is actually a stealth musical. There’s so much music in it, not just the needle drops that we have, but also the on-camera music performances. And as you pointed out, the musical moments that these characters share that show us, the audience, that they have more in common than they believe.
DEADLINE: I have to ask about the Maggie Rogers’ “Back in Your Body” needle drop. I heard the song and I couldn’t place it at first because there was no singing. Did you have any other ideas, or did you see that song very clearly there?
LEVY: We do script a lot of the musical moments in our show, but that one was not scripted. That one was a discovery in the editing room. And I remember our fabulous music supervisors, Amanda Krieg Thomas, and Anna Romanoff sent me a dump of songs, and we had this beautiful footage, but it wasn’t quite working, and I couldn’t figure out why. I actually sat with my assistant one day, and we just listened to all the songs. When we got to that song, I was like, “Oh, obviously, this is obviously it.” However, it felt we needed it to build.
There’s a very important build that’s happening in that scene, both musically and also in Hannah’s literal body. But also, how can we use this song to show that the “broken” — and I put quotes around that very intentionally because she’s not broken, but she thinks she is — the “broken” pieces of Hannah are being put back together. We actually deconstructed the song to do that. So the song starts out where it’s just instrumental, and then we start to hear some backing vocals come in first, and then finally, when everything comes together, Maggie’s beautiful vocal comes in. It was just an extraordinary discovery in the edit room. I have to do a shout out to our fabulous editor, Lisa Robison, but her assistant editor, Noah, put that together for the first pass, and we were just all so floored, and it worked so perfectly.
DEADLINE: I wanted to ask more generally about your approach to that big climax scene for Hannah and Garrett, as well as the rape that happened to Hannah?
LEVY: It was one of the first things that compelled me about this story is that Hannah is a survivor, but it’s not a story about assault or trauma. It’s a story about surviving and about learning how to live with [it] and that you can live a full life with that. I love how positively Elle portrayed it in the book, and it was really important to us in the writers room to carry that story responsibly.
You’ll notice, we never show it, we never show the event, and we’re very careful about what we show and also what we give screentime and storytime to. It’s all about what’s triggering Hannah in that moment, and what the real trigger is and what the real block is. The other thing that we discovered in the writers’ room to try to externalize what Elle did so beautifully internally in the book, is we found that — and this is not in the book, but we felt like it was a natural extension of what’s there — her writer’s block came from shutting herself down.
So again, it’s not him. We’re not giving him any power. She blocked herself up because she was not ready to deal with that at the time and didn’t realize that’s what she did. It felt really important to us to explore “What power can she reclaim in rediscovering her own voice?”
DEADLINE: With the song at the end that she sings, how did that come about Did Ella contribute to that? What was the process of putting that together?
LEVY: Amy Allen wrote that song with Ethan Gruska, for us, which was a just pinch me moment to collaborate with Amy Allen, and we shared a brief of what we wanted the song to be. We knew roughly what we wanted it to be, and we shared some episodes with her so that she understood Hannah’s story and also Hannah’s voice. One of the scenes that I think really resonated — Amy will have to speak to this herself, but I think one of the scenes that really resonated with her was that scene with Allie and Hannah in 108, where Hannah’s finally telling Allie what happened to her, and Allie says, “Oh, you don’t have to tell me. I knew all along, you’re the girl.”
That’s a scene where Hannah’s trying to figure out which girl she wants to be. She wants to find the girl that she was before. I think that’s where the title came from, and a lot of those ideas of — it was important to both me and Amy that she’s not broken, and that’s very important to say, and that she realizes that in that moment. But Garrett also was an important part of that revelation, too, and so that song is a tribute to herself, but it’s also a tribute to Allie, and it’s also a tribute to Garrett. Finding that balance was really fun. Amy and I did a lot of back and forth, and then I finally got to play it for Ella on set one day. I have a video of her listening to it, and she cried. It was beautiful.
Another very important contributor to that song is Alana de Fonseca, our music producer, who arranged it. Amy and Ethan wrote it, but Alana arranged it in the way that Hannah arranged it, with the looping and the hockey sounds and all of the instruments. It was very important to us also that Hannah could exist alone on stage and build this song herself. That’s also a crucial part of what I think makes that song work.
DEADLINE: You’ve made some changes to how things end in terms of Garrett’s hockey career for Season 1. Will you want to explore that a little more in season two? How did you arrive at ending it there? I’d love to see Aaron Delaney get some, justice, or have them get closure.
LEVY: We spent a lot of time making sure that we got the hockey as correct as we could, and we actually have done even more work in season two to better understand Garrett’s position as a hockey player who has been drafted by the Bruins, but is still trying to finish out his college career. There’s a lot more on that in season two that we didn’t get to scratch the surface of in season one.
As far as season one goes, we mostly wanted to explore how Garrett is finding himself in the shadow of his father, and that’s both specific to his hockey experience, but also pretty universal. Whether or not we have famous parents, we always have to define ourselves in separation from them right around the time of college, usually, and so that was a big part of his journey.
DEADLINE: Each book focuses on a certain couple, but you wove Dean and Allie into season one. Are you less concerned about isolating the love stories to specific seasons?
LEVY: Every season is going to have a main love story that’s going to drive the season, but we also want to honor the fact that there’s happily ever afters in these books, and so once there’s a happily ever after, we don’t want to keep tearing them apart and bring them back together. That’s not fun for any of us. We love the couples, so there is a passing of the baton that happens, but we also don’t want Hannah and Garrett to ride off into the sunset and disappear from the landscape of our show. They are still very much present in season two, and are a big part of the community of characters that we’re building on the show.
DEADLINE: Is it safe to say Dean and Allie are the focus of season two? Can you say?
LEVY: I can’t confirm that yet, but that will we will say more on that once we air.
DEADLINE: I just love the J Lo needle drop scene and how you slowly bring them together. What is behind the decision to bring in Charlie Evans as Hunter Davenport?
LEVY: That’s obviously a very big twist in the season. Hunter is a character in the books, but it does not really have a lot of conflict until we get to his books. He has a book in the Briar U series, and we mostly just wanted to tap on the fact that we have more than just four books, and we want to play with a whole universe of Elle Kennedy characters, and we intend to. And they might show up in ways that you don’t expect, especially ones that have more story down the line.
So, yeah, he came up. It’s a little different than the books. We wanted to find ways to externalize the internal and keep the stories going, but it was a fun way to play with that character, and it still does honor, you know, his backstory. And there are some things coming up Season Two that all I’ll tease, but not reveal anything, because there’s a ways to go before we get to it
DEADLINE: In regards to getting a season two before season one airs, did that help you plot out season one at all? Did you roughly plot out season two or did it influence how season one shaped out?
LEVY: We shot all of season one before we got a season two pickup. We knew what season one was going to be, and we always had. I’ve always had visions of at least four seasons, because we have four books. In success, I think this show could go for a while, and that’s my hope. I think it’s Prime Video’s hope too. We’ll see, tune in and watch so that we do. So we had loose ideas for what season two would be. There’s certain things that we’ve obviously set up at the end of season one that we have to pay off and honor in season two. But beyond that, I think it’s really more the structure that we were teeing up. And there’s some really fun book moments that we get to play with in season two as well, and that’s kind of all I can say.
DEADLINE: For Garrett’s storyline with his dad, I feel like that aligns with how you’re very conscious of what you want to show on camera like with Hannah’s story. How did you want to approach their relationship and the reveal of Phil Graham’s abuse?
LEVY: That was another thing that we, in the writer’s room, were really compelled by in The Deal, which is, not only is Garrett living under the shadow of his dad, but also his dad is abusive, and Garrett doesn’t talk about it. One of the things that I found really interesting, and it involves a little bit of a shift from the book, I made a shift that Hannah also doesn’t talk about her past for a couple of reasons, one, because it made it easier for me not to have that be the thing that leads and that defines her, because it doesn’t define her In the book.
Both of them have to go on a journey this season to figure out how to separate themselves from this thing so that it doesn’t define them, but that they can become their own person. For Garrett’s journey, he only has one living parent, because he lost his mom when he was younger, and he goes on a journey where, like many kids of abusive parents, you want to hope that your parent could change, and maybe you could get the parent that you never had. Deep down, that’s not going to happen, but you don’t want to know that. So we got to explore what would happen if Garrett started to hope. And then unfortunately, we don’t want to rehabilitate Phil Graham because he’s a pretty bad person, but I think that’s the thing that makes it real [that] we don’t give everything a happy ending.
DEADLINE: This show is being promoted as a cross between Bridgerton and Heated Rivalry. How do you feel those comparisons bolster the show and how it’s different? What will Off Campus add to the conversation when it comes out?
LEVY: We should be so lucky to be compared to those shows. I am so honored. We are so different from both of them, but I’m honored to be in the same breath as them. Off Campus really is a college show first and foremost, which neither of those are. It is a romance. But as I’ve said before, it’s also about community, it’s about friendship.
It’s a show where we get to dive into these characters lives and live with them and exist with them, and they can hopefully become our friends. So we get to fall in love. We get to discover ourselves, our voices, in the case of Hannah, and I think one of the things that makes Off Campus unique and special is that it really is a time in your life when you are creating and carving your identity, and that’s unique to these four years of college.
We wanted to tell a story that was really aspirational for anybody who hasn’t been in college, but also nostalgic for those of us who are out of college, and hopefully also feels like we’re looking at these college students at eye level, so we’re not looking down. We really want to honor that experience, and I think that’s what makes the show special and unique.
DEADLINE: Have you considered making any of the hockey players queer or other big changes to those romances?
LEVY: I love a queer romance. I also want to honor the books that Elle wrote. While I would love to be able to layer in new characters, at this moment in time, I don’t have plans to make any big changes to the book characters in that way just because I do want to honor people’s relationships to these characters that they have gotten to know.
That said, I have, for instance, added a new character, Jules Logan, who’s Logan’s sibling, non-binary, and so I’m finding ways to fold that in, and in future seasons, I’ll look for other ways to build out the world as well.
DEADLINE: There’s so much discussion about hockey and locker room talk and (toxic) masculinity and all that culture. How did you want to keep it realistic in a way but also show how these men could behave? Could you talk about navigating that reality versus maybe what could become real?
LEVY: I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, which is we do our best to honor what feels real for young men of today. But I also think young men of today are more thoughtful than maybe previous generations, and I think this show has the opportunity to demonstrate non-toxic masculinity, and Garrett does grapple with that with his dad. His dad is a prime example of toxic masculinity, and he has to find a path for himself that is more healthy and more in line with who he is, because he is not his father, but he is deeply afraid of becoming his father. I think that is, in its core, how men can push back against the toxic masculinity of previous generations.
In general, we’re always looking for ways that we can showcase and exemplify these kinds of conversations. I’m thinking of the conversation that Dean and Garrett have in the gym where they’re talking about consent, because consent is important, and it’s also sexy. And friendship conversations where Logan is encouraging Garrett to open up and tell him about the things that are going on and he doesn’t want to, because he hasn’t been shown a model of how easy it is to open up, because his dad never did.
I think showing these guys kind of struggle with it is important, but also showing the positive outcome.
The RAINN Hotline for survivors of sexual assault is 800.656.HOPE or 800-656-4673. The Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is 988 for those who may be seeking to speak with someone. Help is available.
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