Due to Off Campus quite literally taking place on campus, it's pretty clear that all the characters are roughly the same age. But fans recently realized that Ella Bright and Belmont Cameli have a 10-year age gap between them in real life (she's 19 and he's 28), leading to some discourse among fans.
Ella was asked about the age difference by Vanity Fair, who wrote that she laughed off concern and explained, “When we spend that much time together on set, it is very, very easy to just become so close. He’s one of my best friends.”
Showrunner Louisa Levy was also asked by Variety about Ella's age (due to her being newly 18 when filming intimate scenes in season 1), and explained that she “had a conversation with Ella before we closed her deal to make sure she knew what was coming. She’d read the book, so she already understood, but I walked her through everything and made sure she was comfortable and confident.”
“If I had felt she wasn’t ready, I would have pumped the brakes immediately,” Levy continued. “But she was so game. And we have an extraordinary intimacy coordinator, Kathy Kadler, who had conversations with not just Belmont and Ella but with all the actors who had any intimacy work. [It was about] really understanding what made everyone comfortable, what they felt good about, what they didn’t. We never did anything that made anyone uncomfortable before we ever rolled a frame of camera.”
FYI, Levy also told Variety why she changed the ages of some of the characters, saying, “Each season is a semester, so two seasons covers a full year—slowing down that timeline opens things up considerably. The biggest change was Tucker being younger rather than the oldest, because he’s the last book, and we need to make sure he’s still at Briar by the time we get there. It’s also just about building a cohesive group where everyone has their role.”
Noted!
