Louisa Levy created and serves as the co-showrunner on Prime Video’s latest romance hit, ‘Off Campus.’ Jesse Baldridge; Liane Hentscher/Prime Logo text Writer Louisa Levy’s journey with Off Campus has been long.
The showrunner was sent the open writing assignment and read Elle Kennedy’s new adult romance novels that serves as the show’s source material. She couldn’t put them down. “They’re so incredibly readable. There’s so many books that I read and love, but I don’t see a way into them for a TV show,” Levy tells The Hollywood Reporter on a Zoom from the Off Campus production office in Vancouver.
The writer, along with the rest of the cast and crew, returned to Canada to begin shooting the show’s second season, which was announced months before its premiere on Prime Video. “For these books, I could see what I would do with the TV show version of them,” she continues.
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The writer was drawn to the idea of telling a more mature romance — the books are technically “new adult,” the literary genre centered around college students and those in their early 20s. “I love YA, but I loved the prospect of being able to tell a romance that dives into deeper things,” she says. “[A story] that dives into Hannah’s experience with sexual assault, that dives into Garrett’s experience with domestic abuse, but also [does it] in a way that still at the end of the day feels light and fun.”
Levy, a first-time showrunner, pitched her take to the show’s production company, Temple Hill, who loved and brought it to Amazon. It was a success. The studio loved it, and Levy closed her deal. Then, the writers strike happened and she wasn’t able to do anything. “I’ll be honest, I was a little nervous about [whether or not] I’d still be as excited about the project as I was at the beginning when the strike ended,” she says.
“Sometimes you just have to harness your enthusiasm and then it kind of dies, and that didn’t happen with this project,” Levy says. “I was as excited, if not more so, when the strike ended.”
Below, Levy speaks with THR about Off Campus’ journey from the page to the screen, when she knew which characters would lead which seasons and what to expect in season two.
How’s season two prep going?
We’re in Vancouver. We’re getting ready. We’re doing our best to stay focused on season two, even though it’s obviously so exciting seeing all of the fan reactions to season one. Truly our fans are the best, and one of my favorite parts — I don’t even want to say favorite because there’s so many wonderful parts about the world experiencing this show — but one of my favorite parts is also the artist reactions. We’ve got the big names, we’ve got the JLo’s, the Elton John’s, but we’ve also got the newer artists. I love that we get to give them a platform and introduce the world to artists like G-Flip and Chloe Qisha and Bea and her Business. There’s so many incredible artists in our show.
I’m actually speaking with The Beaches this week.
I love them so much. They’ve been so kind and wonderful in this whole process.
What was the development process like after the strike?
I got to dive in with Temple Hill and Amazon to write that first pilot script. As with any development process, it took a few drafts to hone in on what it was and what the access point was. I do think it really always was the shape that we have in terms of ending on the deal. That’s always been the crux of that first episode, but how far we get some of the other stories and characters and what we’re launching, that stuff was [in the] development process.
Levy and the Off Campus team at the show’s L.A. premiere in April. Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for Prime Video What was the partnership with the studio like?
It was really fun to be able to find it with partners who wanted me to make the same show that they were looking for. I think that was so crucial with Amazon, to have partners who wanted a sexier show. They wanted to really tell emotional stories, but with an underpinning of joy and of positivity because no matter how emotional it can get, we always stay in that place of positivity and optimism at its heart. It’s a hopeful show and I think that’s what I wanted to watch. It’s what I wanted to write. I loved that Amazon wanted that as well. I did the pilot and then they asked for a format. In that document I put together originally, I had a 10-episode shape. They asked for eight episodes, so I took the 10 episodes and put them down into eight. Off of that document, I got a green light for the show.
This show has such a rich ensemble. The casting process, however, is a bit different with most shows. You’re casting the supporting roles with actors you know will have to lead future seasons. I’ve spoken with most of them, and it seems like several of them auditioned for several roles. What was the process like?
We were casting the essences of characters, so having the books as a blueprint were so helpful. Elle writes these characters so clearly [that] we know who Dean is, we know who Garrett is. We wrote the whole season for the most part before we cast anybody, so we knew what we were going to ask them to do in terms of skill level as an actor. We also know because we know what’s happening in Tucker’s book, we know what Tucker needs to be able to do, what Jalen needs to be able to do to grow into that.
How did you do that?
One of the things we did for Tucker, for example, is one of the audition scenes was a future scene that may never get shot because we haven’t written that season, but it was a future version of Tucker beacuse we wanted to see [how that would look] when we were auditioning people. I changed his age order. He’s the youngest now, which is different, to be able to get to his season and have him still be in college. Some of the people we auditioned felt very young, which felt right for this season, but we wanted to make sure that there was range available.
One of the beautiful things about Jalen is that he has that range already in him. He’s ready for that. We can see season one Tucker, and we can also see season four Tucker, so [we know] that we have room to grow with him.
How do you move forward with characters that were leads in one season and then move them into the supporting role for the next? What’s that balance like?
Season two really becomes even more of an ensemble than season one was. Season one really had those ensemble moments — I think episode five is a good example of that. Tucker has his own storyline in episode five. Hannah and Garrett have their own storyline. Jules and Logan have their own storyline. It really’s more of a classic television A-B-C story model. In season two, we’re leaning even further into that so that we can still tell Hannah and Garrett’s continuing story.
We’re not just dropping them off and letting them ride off into the sunset, but it’s not their romance that is the backbone of the season in the way it was for season one. We’ll still have moments with them. We’ll still get to exist in their coupledom. We’ll still get to see the challenges that they’re facing together, but it’s not the thing spearheading the shape of the season in the same way. We’re leaning a little bit more into that model. It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to have many romantic moments for Allie and Dean as they spearhead their season. We just have a little bit more of an ensemble model and that will allow us to exist in this community, in this space that we now know all of the characters coming out of season one. We don’t have to introduce anybody, we just get to live in it.
Garrett (Belmont Cameli) and Hannah (Ella Bright) in Off Campus.
Liane Hentscher/Prime Mika told me that she knew from her first audition that Allie would lead season two. What was the decision-making process like in choosing which characters lead each season? At what point in the process did it become clear or had you always known?
It’s kind of always been that because one of the things that, from my very first take when I was pitching to Temple Hill and Amazon, I needed to do as a TV writer adapting is figure out how to not only take this story that’s in this book and put it on screen. But also because it’s a TV show and not a film [is] where to get that forward-moving engine. One of the things that felt important to me is… Listen, I come from the network TV school. I was an assistant on Grey’s Anatomy. That’s where I learned the foundation of my storytelling skills, and you always have a cliffhanger. Whether it’s a season end or an episode end or even a commercial out, you have to fight for the attention of the audience.
The balance that I had to strike is book fans want a happy ever after. As they should. I’m also a romance book girly. I want that happily ever after two. I certainly don’t want to end the season on Hannah and Garrett broken up. I want to give them their happily ever after in the season. That meant we needed to break them up in the middle of season. That meant we needed to get them back together, give them the rom-com feeling of the happily ever after, but what are you tuning into for season two? How are we making people not just move onto to the next show. From the beginning, my solution to that problem was telling one and a half books in a season, roughly. Obviously, it’s not exact calculus, but we’re telling the beginning, middle, and end of Hannah and Garrett’s story, and the beginning and middle of Allie and Dean’s story and leaving it hanging. That was always the structure.
And looking ahead?
Now, we pick up Allie and Dean’s story in season two, and we get to launch our next love story that gets left hanging. There’s always going to be a happily ever after, and there’s always going to be something left hanging, a question mark that tells the audience what they’re tuning in for in the following season. That was always part of the shape of the show when I pitched it. We were very clear when we were casting what the plan was because we needed people to know that even if they didn’t have too much to do season one, they would be expected to step into larger roles in future seasons, both because we wanted to get actors who were ready and capable of that challenge and also because it was important to Gina and myself to have a cast that acted like leaders on set.
How did you set that tone?
We sent an email out to them before we started filming season one and told them it was important to us that nobody thought of the call sheets as hierarchy because even though it’s Hannah and Garrett’s season, it’s all of our show. We said, if any one of you steps on set, it’s as if you’re the No. 1 on the call sheet, which means it comes with a responsibility to set a tone to be a leader. It also means that you can all share that responsibility, that you’re all building this show together and you’re not just letting Bel and Ella do that responsibility. That has been wonderful because it bonded them from a really early moment, but it also set the tone for whose show it was and where the responsibility fell across not just season one, but across the whole series.
Logan (Antonio Cipriano), Dean (Stephen Thomas Kalyn), Tucker (Jalen Thomas Brooks) and Garrett (Belmont Cameli) in Off Campus. Courtesy of Prime Can you tell me more about your work with the intimacy coordinator?
I have worked with intimacy coordinators before, so it was very important to me to not just find one but find a very good one. We did and that was non-negotiable because even before we hired Ella, we knew that our cast would be young. We didn’t know quite how young, but we knew that they would be young, and we wanted to make sure that every care and every responsibility was taken to create a safe space for our cast. Kathy Kadler, our intimacy coordinator who did season one with us and now is coming back for season two, is very, very thoughtful. She also has a background in mental health, which is helpful because we’re exploring mental health things on the show. An awareness of that, especially because in this case, for Hannah, those two things intersect as far as her experience around her sexual assault. We were able to be very cognizant with that and how we staged those scenes in terms of having a responsibility to the character, and how we portray that character.
I’m curious about the conversations surrounding Ella, in particular, given how much younger she is than Bel and in general.
When we met Ella and fell in love with her, it was really important to me that before we closed any deal or any contract to have a very in-depth conversation with her. As much as I loved her and believed her to be a star, which she now is, I was not about to put her on set if I felt like she wasn’t equipped for it. I talked to her on the phone and walked her through everything that was expected of Hannah this season because I didn’t want there to be any surprises and walked her through what the process of working with an intimacy coordinator is or would be. I told her to reach out to people who she trusts and knows who have done intimacy work and ask them about that experience. I can tell her everything I’ll do from my perspective as a showrunner and as a producer, but I’ve never been in her shoes. I can only tell her that I’ll do everything in my power to make her feel safe. I will never make her do something that she doesn’t feel comfortable with, but I will never know what that’s like. I encouraged her to speak to someone. I don’t know if she did, but the fact that I told her not to close this deal if she felt even a little bit that this wasn’t something she was ready for and excited to do — that was really important to me. Frankly, that was important to me with everyone.
I still say it on a regular basis. We will not roll camera if you don’t feel comfortable. You might think you’re comfortable in one day. Then you show up, and we’re ready to roll and you don’t feel comfortable again. I will never make you do something you don’t want to do. I tell the directors that and everyone that we’ve hired has the same ethos. Nobody’s going to force anyone to do something that they don’t want to do. That creates safety, but it also creates a cast that feels good because when they’re filming these scenes, they’re excited to do it, and they’re looking forward to embodying these scenes because they’re collaborators. They’re not just puppets.
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Off Campus is now streaming all of season one on Prime Video. Read THR‘s show coverage here.
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