SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers for Season 1 of Prime Video’s Off Campus.
Season 1 of Prime Video’s Off Campus, based on the book series by Elle Kennedy, has entered the hockey rink.
Skating into the world of “fake dating turned real feelings” onscreen romances like that between Lana Condor’s Lara Jean Song Covey and Noah Centineo’s Peter Kavinsky in the To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before film trilogy or Season 1 of Bridgerton’s star couple Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dynevor) and Simon, the Duke of Hastings (Regé-Jean Page), are singer songwriter Hannah Wells (Ella Bright) and captain of Briar University’s elite hockey team Garrett Graham (Belmont Cameli).
“I think what’s really fun is that they connect in so many ways that surprises themselves and maybe the audience as well,” Bright told Deadline ahead of Season 1’s launch. “They find these moments of connection and real understanding with each other that they really don’t expect, because, obviously, they’re in a fake dating situation, and they don’t think anything real is going to come out with that.”
When Garrett sees that Hannah aced their philosophy midterm paper, he recruits her to be his tutor because he did not get the grade needed to stay on the ice as the leader of the successful hockey team at Briar University. His first advances — calling Hannah “Mona” and begging for help in the class after she saw him naked in the shower — don’t go over well, but then he clinches “The Deal” by volunteering to fake date her in order to get the attention of her longtime crush, guitarist and singer songwriter Justin Kohl (Josh Heuston).
“It’s really fun to see them play with developing these real feelings and getting confused and working through that. Obviously, it all works out well in the end,” Bright continued.
Taking inspiration from Kennedy’s first book in the series, titled The Deal, Hannah and Garrett’s agreement takes on a whole new layer when Hannah asks one more thing of Garrett before she seals things with Justin. But this request sparks up a romance between Hannah and Garrett instead, and as they grow closer, they share the darker parts of their lives with each other as well.
“Obviously, each character has a certain amount of trauma that they’ve resolved to different extents as individuals, and I think especially for Garrett and I think for Hannah too, the love that they have and the support and trust that they’ve built just allows for a space, at least for Garrett, to start talking about that trauma,” Cameli told Deadline. “And for Hannah to share it with Garrett is a special moment as well, but it’s really just as important for them to share their story as it is to receive the other’s. So it’s not like, ‘Oh, we’ve both been through horrible sh-t, we’re gonna make it out of this.’ It’s just, ‘Oh, it’s really nice to have a person who I can tell this to’ and ‘I don’t have to carry this all by myself anymore.’”
Cameli and Bright further discuss establishing their characters’ chemistry, kicking off the Prime Video adaptation series based on the best-selling books and more in the below interview.
DEADLINE: What was it like filming the dual perspective shots that open the show with Hannah’s dancing and cleaning and Garrett’s skating to “Dancing With Myself” by Billy Idol? Did you watch each other’s scenes to try and coordinate the movements at all?
BELMONT CAMELI: I was watching Ella do hers.
ELLA BRIGHT: That was the first week of filming. I didn’t get to see Belmont do his, but that was a really fun moment to film, because I think we wrapped filming that day at like, 3 a.m. and the floor — because I was mopping — it was all wet, and I almost slipped to my death like, a million times. But it was a lot of fun. We were just dancing around. “Dancing With Myself” was just playing on loop. It was a really fun end to the first week.
CAMELI: Yeah, and that was after you did the whole “Bitch Is Back” sequence all day long.
BRIGHT: Yes, it’s a lot of dancing and singing.
CAMELI: They’re like, “And actually, Ella, thank you so much. You just did that performance, like, for 13 hours, we actually need you to mop now too. And she did great. I didn’t really do mine. It was mostly my double. I can’t do some of that sh-t.
DEADLINE: How does music unite Hannah and Garrett as characters? Did you two listen to anything specific getting into character?
BRIGHT: I mean, music’s the first thing that we see them really connect on in a way that they don’t even know. It was just, like you brought up, the literal first moment of the scene is them playing the exact same song on their playlist, which I think is a fun way of showing their connection. Yeah. And then we both, we both have playlists that we made to get into characters. A lot of Taylor Swift for me.
CAMELI: There’s nothing more fun than when you meet somebody and you start to discover that you have the same taste in music. There’s nothing better than [when] you meet somebody you have a crush on, you suspect they have a crush on you. Usually, it helps if you have a similar taste in music [which] is like a good catalyst to get along. And it’s that way for our characters.
DEADLINE: Did you feel any pressure being the first couple in Off Campus, because these books are so beloved? Belmont, I know you’ve done Along For The Ride, which was a book adaptation. How did you want to set the tone for the show?
CAMELI: I don’t know that I personally felt any pressure. I felt very grateful to be in the position. I thought it was important for myself and for Ella to set the tone for set culture and morale. I felt very blessed to be in that position, and set a good example and a precedent for all the other couples that we’ll have, hopefully in later seasons. I was ready for it. I’ve been waiting a long time to lead a really meaty story like this. So I was happy. I showed up on day one, like, “Let’s f—ing go.” I was excited.
BRIGHT: Having the source material, it’s a great privilege, because you get to pull so many things from it and understand the story we’re telling. I think we were just super excited. It was such a cool opportunity to kind of kickstart this whole thing, and we’re really happy to be celebrating it with this press tour. It’s been so fun.
DEADLINE: Belmont, how was it working with Steve Howie as Phil [Graham, Garrett’s dad] and establishing that dynamic? [Showrunner] Louisa [Levy] said he’s not a good guy, so how did you see the humanity in that relationship?
CAMELI: I mean, look, he’s not a good guy, but he is a very significant character in the story. Who Phil Graham is is a very important detail to inform who Garrett Graham is, and who Garrett becomes once he finds his individuality and his autonomy and his real relationship to hockey and himself and Hannah. All that evolution is really important, I think.
Working with Steve was great. A lot of those scenes were very alive and exciting and different in a lot of takes. We played with different temperatures a lot of times, because there was usually anger involved. Those scenes were enriching and exhausting a lot of the time. Those are kind of hard ones to do, but Steve’s great. He’s good scene partner.
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