“Off Campus” Star Ella Bright on Playing Hannah Wells

Since the TV adaptation of Elle Kennedy’s “Off Campus” novels was announced in 2024, fans of the massively popular book series have been wondering: Who is going to play Hannah Wells?

The answer is Ella Bright, the 19-year-old, British actress who will be gracing our screens when all eight episodes of “Off Campus” drop on May 13 on Prime Video — complete with a convincing American accent to boot. Bright was in the middle of studying for her A-levels when the Zoom call came in that would upend her life, and the plan she’d been working toward gave way to a leading role in one of the most anticipated streaming adaptations in years.

In Season 1 of “Off Campus,” Bright stars as the shy, self-possessed singer-songwriter who agrees to a fake relationship with all-star hockey captain Garrett Graham (Belmont Cameli) in order to make her crush jealous. Adapted from Kennedy’s beloved books — which have sold more than six million copies — the show follows the elite men’s hockey team at the fictional Briar University in Massachusetts and the women in their lives, with each season revolving around a different love story. 

Born in New York City and raised in London, Bright has been performing since she was 8, less a calculated career move than a practical solution to a household problem. “I was a very loud child,” she tells Variety over Zoom. “My parents just went, ‘Put her in performing so she can shout somewhere else.’” She then spent the better part of her teenage years on the British children’s series “Malory Towers” — set in post World War II England, about an all-girls boarding school — joining the cast at 12, and finishing at 18. By the time it ended, the girls she had grown up alongside on screen had become her closest friends in real life. “They practically live at my house every day,” she says. It was, by any measure, a remarkable way to grow up, she says.

At 19, Bright is not far from the age of the character she is playing, though the material is a considerable distance from the kid-friendly world of “Malory Towers.”

“I always made this joke with my mom,” she says. “‘Malory Towers’ was a school-based program. So now it was like, here she goes, she’s graduated, she’s going to college.” But, instead of going to university, Bright’s “college” coming-of-age year unfolded on a set in Vancouver, surrounded by her “Off Campus” castmates. 

For the casting process, Bright submitted a self-tape, completed two Zoom calls and then flew to Los Angeles for a marathon day of chemistry reads. Weeks of additional callbacks followed, then came one final Zoom, billed to her as a meeting about the show’s music — which sent her logging on in a quiet panic about her voice, a lifelong insecurity of hers. The producers kindly stopped her, though, before she could spiral. They weren’t there to talk about music, they told her: Bright had gotten the part. “I just sobbed my big eyes out,” she says.

The show’s music actually turned out to be among the most transformative parts of the experience. Bright worked with a vocal coach throughout production and, on days off, went straight to the studio. She and co-star Josh Heuston, who plays musician Justin Kohl, both learned piano and guitar from scratch, and it was important to both of them that no hand doubles be used. “I feel very happy to say that it was all me,” Bright says, again noting that what had begun as her greatest fear ended up being her favorite part of making the show.

The season features seven songs in total, four of them originals developed with the show’s music team and songwriter Amy Allen, who has written hits for Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo and Harry Styles, among many others.

To get into Hannah’s headspace, Bright built a playlist almost immediately after landing the role. Olivia Rodrigo’s “Scared of My Guitar” was an early inspiration, while Ethel Cain’s “Sun Bleached Flies” she found deeper into filming, when the story moved into its more emotional register. “I really think there’s a quiet strength to that song that I see in Hannah,” she says. “I really felt connected to it.” What followed was a Pinterest board and a deep dive into the books — she read “The Deal” in a single day after getting the part, having previously only skimmed it during the audition process. She has since read “The Score” and “The Mistake,” though she is, by her own admission, superstitious about reading ahead. She will read the next book, she says, when the next season is greenlit. Season 2 is already confirmed, which accounts for “The Mistake” — assuming, of course, that the show follows the order of the books, but she has read “The Score,” too. A third season, perhaps, may already be in the works.

In the meantime, Bright is unambiguous about her favorite couple in the series. Dean and Allie, she exclaims, are “so cool and exciting,” and she cannot wait for their story to unfold on screen. “Their relationship is unmatched,” she adds. “I’m so excited about that, but Hannah and Garrett have a special place in my heart.”

The cast around her is, by all evidence, genuinely close. She and Mika Abdalla, who plays Hannah’s best friend Allie Hayes, lived in the same apartment complex during filming and were rarely apart. “She’s like a big sister to me,” Bright says. Heuston is someone she had recognized before ever meeting him, from his work on the Australian series “Heartbreak High,” which made their first encounter outside the hotel lobby somewhat nerve-racking. 

To build a closeness across the whole “Off Campus” ensemble, the main cast drove up to Whistler for a long weekend early in production with no itinerary or agenda, just a big rented house and impromptu games of hide and seek. “We’re all from really separate worlds,” Bright says, “And everyone’s got their really cool, amazing stories.” The cast then spent virtually every weekend together throughout filming, and that ease, she believes, made it onto the screen. “We just genuinely loved spending time with each other,” she says. “And that happened to be captured, which is really cool.”

The show enters a marketplace that has, in the past year, become unexpectedly hot for hockey romance. “Heated Rivalry,” the Crave adaptation that became a cultural phenomenon on HBO Max, introduced a massive new audience to the genre and turned its leads into household names almost overnight. Bright watched it in a single sitting, becoming as obsessed as everyone else. Some of the “Off Campus” cast found themselves in Los Angeles together in January at the height of that frenzy, equal parts energized and slightly dazed by what they were watching happen in real time. They crossed paths with “Heated Rivalry” star Connor Storrie at a party, compared notes briefly, and came away with the sense that they were standing at the edge of something. “I guess the world is ready for a lot of ice hockey at the moment,” Bright says. “It’s really cool.”

Despite the show not yet being out, Bright is already beginning to understand what that kind of attention feels like up close. Within hours of the casting announcement, a stranger recognized her on the London Underground. She recalls the encounter being delightful: a high five, a “good luck, you’re going to be amazing” and then gone. She recalls standing there a little speechless while her friends, watching the encounter unfold, arrived at the same thought simultaneously. “Girl,” their expressions said, “what have you just signed on for?”

It is a question Bright is still, in some ways, answering. Her plan is to stay largely offline, lean on her castmates and resist the pull of whatever discourse follows the premiere. “It’s kind of a new experience for all of us,” she says. “It’s so crazy to be in that orbit of conversation. It’s a very strange experience, but this has been a really great support group.” Production for Season 2 is set to begin almost immediately after the press tour wraps, leaving Bright very little time to sit with whatever comes next, before she has to go back and make more of it. She seems, on balance, entirely at peace with that.

“I just never imagined that I would be able to get a role like this,” Bright says. “It felt like a dream. And I couldn’t really believe that it happened to me.”