If you’ve read the novels that Off Campus is based on, you know that this upcoming book-to-screen adaptation will be a sexually explicit Amazon Prime series. So, with that in mind, I asked the cast of this hockey romance about filming the more intimate scenes, and while “nobody’s thrilled” to be doing them, they told me how they fostered a safe and productive work environment to create these important, romantic and sexy moments in the show.
Now, much like other steamy shows like Heated Rivalry and Bridgerton, sex is a big part of Off Campus. In Season 1, which will premiere on the 2026 TV schedule on May 13, we’ll see the leads, Hannah (Ella Bright) and Garrett (Belmont Cameli), make a deal to fake date so Hannah can woo her crush Justin (Josh Heuston) and Garrett can pass philosophy under the tutelage of Hannah. Obviously, things go further than that, and they enter into romance of their own, which, yes, gets spicy.
So, I asked Bright and Cameli how they created a safe and comfortable environment on set to film these intimate moments. During an interview with CinemaBlend, the Hannah actress said:
I mean, we had such amazing conversations with everybody involved. We're so close, and our showrunner is so incredible, and we had amazing intimacy coordinators. You know, there's nothing inherently sexy at all about filming a sex scene. So everything's very choreographed, and it couldn't have been a more comfortable environment for us. And also, it's so character-driven. All of these are very emotional scenes for the characters in many ways. So it just felt very important to the story that we were telling.
If you go back and look at the Bridgerton cast’s comments about filming sex scenes, it becomes apparent quickly that nothing about sex scenes is sexy or impromptu. And while they are still “awkward” to film, as Season 4 lead Yerin Ha put it, after a few takes, “it’s actually quite OK.” According to her, that’s thanks to having a scene partner she could trust.
That was part of it for the Off Campus cast, too, and they also spoke about their intimacy coordinators and having a crew they could trust. To that point, Cameli told me that no one was “thrilled” to be filming these heated moments. However, because it was a “team effort,” they were able to create them in ways that didn’t make anyone uncomfortable:
It’s a team effort. Nobody’s thrilled to be there. It's like, yeah, everybody's on the same team. And yeah, I mean, they ended up, you know, like those days, were treated with just as much care as everything else, and even more so.
Now, diving into how they created this environment, Josh Heuston, who plays Justin, told me that they had intimacy coordinators on set for every sex scene, and there was a lot of rehearsal and blocking involved. Between that and making sure everyone felt “safe,” they were able to create the steamy scenes for Off Campus:
Yeah, I think every single scene, we had an intimacy coordinator. And for a lot of mine, we had rehearsals for it and blocking, and so by the end of it, it's just like a dance, essentially. My main thing is that everyone just needs to feel safe in those sorts of scenes, and I think everyone felt pretty good in all of them. And yeah, I think you can see that in the final product as well.
Along with having a supportive crew, intimacy coordinators and a lot of planning, Mika Abdalla, who plays Allie, also highlighted the fact that the cast really is friends, which helps too. Explaining how their real-life friendships make moments like these easier, she said:
And we're also, we were so close, you know, we became really good friends, and so I think we all trusted each other, and were super comfortable with each other as friends, and so I think that makes stuff like that a lot easier.
If you’ve seen the Off Campus trailer, you can tell that this show won’t be shying away from the sexier side of its source material. And it’s even better to know that these moments, which are both intimate and vital to the story’s plot, were treated with care.
Now, to see what happens and how Off Campus turns up the heat, you can stream the new hockey romance with an Amazon Prime subscription starting on May 13.
