Off Campus Showrunner Louisa Levy Teases A “Whole Universe” To Come

Content warning: This piece mentions sexual assault.

For years, Elle Kennedy’s Off Campus series fueled years of fandom and dream-casting on Tumblr and BookTok. Now her hockey romance novels are finally getting the Prime Video treatment.

Helmed by creator Louisa Levy, who serves as co-showrunner with Gina Fattore, Off Campus (streaming now) is mostly based on 2015’s The Deal and follows a group of Briar University hockey players and their respective love stories. Of course, their chemistry as teammates is just as fun to watch, especially as the lovable ensemble sets the stage for future plot arcs that lean into familiar romance tropes but in unexpected ways.

For Levy, a rom-com connoisseur, it was a feast of storytelling potential. “We have several John Hughes nods in our show, visually speaking,” she tells Bustle over Zoom. “But energetically speaking, we also have a lot of nods to the early-2000s rom-coms, [like] 10 Things I Hate About You. That’s a big one for us.”

Indeed, Season 1 follows Hannah (Ella Bright) and Garrett (Belmont Cameli), whose relationship begins with a fake-dating scheme: She tutors the hockey player, who in turn pretends to date her to make her actual crush (Josh Heuston) jealous. As literature’s fake-daters are wont to do, they develop real feelings, and soon, Hannah feels safe enough to open up about a past sexual assault and her desire to have an orgasm with a partner.

For Levy, it was crucial to approach this part of Hannah’s background with care while also honoring where she is today.

“This is a story about surviving and thriving, and so we were very careful in the writers’ room to never show the actual trauma,” she says. “It’s about her going on a journey to discover that she is not broken — and that is her biggest fear, that she is broken. Garrett becomes a healing part of that journey, but also she heals herself.”

Below, Levy opens up about a key book change, *that* locker room scene, and what’s to come in the world of Off Campus. Spoilers ahead.

Hannah and Garrett’s first time — solo, but together — plays out in such a respectful and steamy way. What was most important to communicate in that scene?

This is such an iconic moment in the books. It was so important to us to get it right because we were always so careful to be responsible with Hannah’s history. We did a lot of research in the writers’ room. We talked to many people who have knowledge in this area. And one of the things that director Sam Bailey, Ella, Belmont, and I all spoke about is how the distance between them is actually crucial for her to feel safe, so that she was in control.

Several building blocks happened before that, where Garrett slowly builds Hannah’s trust — where he introduces her to drinking in public, [which] couldn’t have happened without them getting to know each other on a deeper friendship level.

In the book, Hannah’s forced to break up with Garrett at his dad’s command — she doesn’t want to do it. On the show, Garrett ends things. What was the decision behind that switch?

That was about a couple of things. Since the books came out, there have been new laws in the NCAA about image and likeness, so athletes can earn their own money. A big part of that in the book was Garrett’s financial dependence on his dad. We wanted to be honest and truthful to what college athletes are currently experiencing, so that started to fall apart with that major shift in what happened in the world.

The other thing that I was really interested in exploring is Garrett’s inner fear that he could be like his father. That dovetailed so much with that decision that he makes, and so we were curious in the writers’ room: What would happen if both of Hannah’s and Garrett’s worst days happened on the same day, and how that could cause the worst thing to happen? Because they’re such a good couple, and they belong together, it’s hard to break up a couple like that. But if both of them have their worst day on the same day, then what happens?

The locker room scene, I’m calling it the peen scene...

We called it the locker room full of d*cks.

It’s just like in the book. You could imagine a show being like, We’re gonna do it a more covered-up way — but you’re like, No, let’s just go all out.

It was really hard to pull off because of the previous change. In the book, Hannah breaks up with Garrett, and Garrett doesn’t believe her, understandably, because she doesn’t break up with him for a real reason. So there’s all the reason in the world for him to spread a campus-wide hands-off law. And so when we made that one switch, we were suddenly struggling to figure out this iconic book sequence.

So in making that switch, we felt like, Let’s lean into the moment. And turn it into an exaggeration of what it feels like when you run into your ex for the first time: embarrassment, feeling out of place, longing, wishing that that person missed you, realizing that maybe they don’t — but secretly he does — all of that. It really becomes an externalization of what Hannah and Garrett are both feeling internally. [We had] a lot of intimacy coordinator work to make sure everyone felt comfortable and safe.

Some fans are predicting that Dean and Ally will be the focus of Season 2, even though they’re the focus of the third book. Are you open — like on Bridgerton — to playing around with the order based on what works best for the show?

You’ll have to watch the show and find out.

On that note, the season ends with Hunter Davenport coming in. What does his reveal set up for the future?

It’s our nod to fans that we are looking at the whole universe. We don’t know how that will come to fruition, but Hunter has his own book [in the Briar U series]. He is a very small part of the other books, but he exists. And because these books feel like such a world and community, you’ve got all of these minor characters that become major characters. We don’t have the ability to include all of them from jump, but this is our way of showing that characters might show up in ways that you might not expect.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.