How ’Off Campus’ Creator Louisa Levy Adapted a Beloved Romance Novel Into a Hit Series
The creator, a first-time showrunner, has found herself with a certified hit on her hands. Now, she’s ready to dive back into the world of Briar University for season two, and she’s teasing what’s to come.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
