‘Off Campus’ Star Ella Bright on Her Age Gap With Costar Belmont Cameli, Playing Dress-Up, and Taking a Leap of Faith

Those who have watched the rise of both shows, however, might see more parallels than that between the two. Both Heated Rivalry and Off Campus are romances that started off under the radar before becoming instant sensations, catapulting their stars to a new level of celebrity. Much like Heated Rivalry leads Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams, Bright had no idea that being on this show would change her life overnight. If her Off Campus audition hadn’t worked out, she says, she was going to pivot away from acting, focusing instead on going to college and putting her leading lady dreams on the back burner.

But a few weeks after that fateful tryout, she was flying to Vancouver to shoot the series. She calls it a leap of faith.

“None of this was in my plan at all,” she says. “It flipped my life upside down in the best way I could have ever dreamed about. Things are coming true for me that…I never thought could happen.”

Bright’s relationship with her character, Hannah, evolved over the course of filming Off Campus season one. On the outside, Hannah might look nerdy, but there’s more to her than meets the eye: She’s fiercely independent, quick-witted, musically gifted, and kind.

“I think for my initial self-tape, I played her originally very introverted and shy, because I thought, you know, [she’s a] stereotypical nerdy character,” Bright says. “But I soon discovered she has this confidence in her quirkiness and her ugliness and her weirdness, and I loved that. It was really fresh and new.”

Bright also loves the deep friendship Hannah shares with her best friend, Allie (Mika Abdalla), who will likely be the focus of the show’s second season.

“What I initially saw at the chemistry reads is, not only were they auditioning Garrett and Hannah, they were auditioning every single person that we see in the ensemble cast: the whole hockey team and Allie and Justin. And that showed that, from the beginning, it’s not just the romantic relationships that are at the forefront of the show,” Bright says. “At the end of the day, it is all about friendship and connection and how these different relationships are so formative.”