Belmont Cameli is in the midst of a truly chaotic promotion week. “It’s been crazy. I can’t believe it’s coming to an end,” the 28-year-old jokes on a Zoom with The Hollywood Reporter.
It’s midday in New York, and the Illinois-born actor has just raced back to his hotel room for this conversation. It’s been a day since the release of his new Prime Video series, Off Campus, and he’s almost grateful for the sheer amount of press and activity that have prevented him from falling into the time old tradition of online doomscrolling.
“The only response [to the show] that I’ve been privy to are the text messages I’ve been receiving, which are mostly from my friends and family — and also from some people I haven’t talked to in a really long time,” Cameli says. The actor’s friends and family have been sending him photos of their watch parties to let him know they’re watching.
In the series, Cameli plays Garrett Graham, an NHL-bound college hockey captain and son of a legendary professional player. The father-son pair have an exceedingly complicated relationship that much of Garrett’s internal conflict stems from. Based on the book series by O.G. hockey romance author Elle Kennedy, Off Campus is the latest sports romance offering to hit streaming.
The series follows a college hockey team and the women in their lives at Briar University, tackling the typical college woes, along with some heavier topics. The show has taken a page out of the Bridgerton playbook and will tap different couples to lead each season. The first season focuses on Cameli’s Garrett and his love interest, music student Hannah Wells (Ella Bright), following the plot of Kennedy’s first book in the series, The Deal.
Off Campus came on the heels of Cameli’s roles in the video game adaptation film Until Dawn and Robert Di Niro’s The Alto Knights — the first projects the actor did following stint of inactivity. “I had two years where I had worked only a few days on stuff right around the strike, so I was in the middle of a lull in my career when I booked Until Dawn,” he says, adding it was a big moment for him.
“When I started out, I was busy right away. I started out pretty hot,” says Cameli. “Then I feel like I paid my dues for a bit, and I really struggled for a couple years.”
Cameli, who grew up in a Chicago suburb, actually never had any intention to be an actor. “I was in college and was studying finance. College was just not a good environment for me, and my father passed right when I got to school,” he says. “All of a sudden, life felt really short, and it felt really important that I figured out what I wanted to do.”
The loss put everything into a new perspective for him. “At the time, I was just doing the thing that I was supposed to be doing. You go to a big state school. You get a degree. You go to Chicago. You work in corporate America, the whole nine yards,” Cameli says. “As soon as I considered what that would look like and that there was a possibility of doing anything else, I got the hell out of there because I knew I was going to be miserable.”
The change in mindset led him taking modeling gigs in Chicago and eventually being signed by an acting agency in the city. The actor, despite how “daunting” and “scary” the process of shifting gears was, never hesitated. Adds Cameli, “I’m a really hardheaded and stubborn person, so I just decided to do it.”
Cameli found out about Off Campus in the wake of The Alto Knights. He recalls that there wasn’t a ton of auditions at the time, so he and his actor friends were all aware of the project. “I’d read the pilot, and I wanted to talk to the creators. I took a meeting with Gina [Fattore] and Louisa [Levy],” he says. The trio talked for an hour or two about the character and the complicated relationships at play.
“I was really fired up about the prospect of getting to play Garrett Graham after that conversation,” the actor says. He admits that new adult, the popular romance genre focused on college and 20-something characters, wasn’t the first genre he was chomping at the bit to do, but after reading the scripts and speaking with Fattore and Levy he knew this was the project for him.
Cameli booked the role and dove right into preparations, learning how to skate being at the top of that list. “As soon as I booked the role, I wasted no time getting on the ice because I knew I had a mountain to climb to be able to convincingly play Garrett in game time situations,” he says. “I trained for a while by myself in L.A. and then for a couple more weeks when we got to Vancouver with all the guys.”
The guys in question are Cameli’s onscreen teammates played by Stephen Kalyn, Antonio Cipriano and Jalen Thomas Brooks. The four men attended a hockey bootcamp together to prepare for the role — Kalyn the only amongst them that played hockey his entire young adult life.
The show, perhaps a testament to its big studio budget, shows more on ice action than one might expect. “In our opinion, the more hockey we can pump into this thing, the better,” he says, noting how pleased he is with the way they turned out. The more involved takes were done by Cameli’s double — actual NHL player Vinny Iorio, a current member of the New York Rangers — but a decent amount of the show’s on ice shots are the actor.
“Amazon really invested in getting us up to speed as much as possible before we started shooting, and they’ve continued to do so,” Cameli says. He and the other core four men returned for another two-week bootcamp in March to keep their hockey skills sharp. The cast is slated to return to Vancouver this week to shoot the show’s next season, and the men will be headed right back into hockey training camp.
Given hockey’s prominent space in the show, it’s no surprise that comparisons have been drawn between Off Campus and last year’s surprise hit Heated Rivalry. The hockey element is where the similarities end, truthfully, but Cameli counts the success of the Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie-led show as a win for more than just those in a hockey-centric series. “The way I see it is that the success of Heated Rivalry is a huge success in television,” he says.
“When that happens with Heated Rivalry — especially [when] its budget was not like ours, it was an all Canadian production — to see it percolate globally is a huge win for me as an actor and as a member of this industry,” the actor says. “I love when shit like that happens. That gets me up in the morning. I’m thrilled for them.”
Between Off Campus and Heated Rivalry, hockey’s certainly having a bit of a moment. “I think because of Heated Rivalry, more people tuned into the Olympics. I think because of the Olympics, more people will watch our show,” says Cameli. “It’s a sport with a lot to love, so I’m glad that people are building out narratives around it.”
Beyond hockey, much of the show hinges on his character’s relationship with Bright’s Hannah. The pair kick off the show for the other couples to come — Kennedy’s books center around the other men on the hockey team and the women in their lives.
“I’m really glad I got to go first. I’m really proud of the precedent that Ella and I set on set. I feel really confident that everybody else is prepared for their turn,” Cameli says.
“It’s going to be really cool as a fan of these other performers I get to work with to take more of a backseat to their stories and watch them shine,” he continues.
Hannah and Garrett’s story is far from over, Cameli hits that point home. “I’m really looking forward to the new dynamics. It’s going to be different in a good way, and then from a professional point of view, I will have more time to audition and look for other work too,” he says.
Cameli’s goal is to shoot a feature after they wrap season two, and last summer, he wouldn’t have had the time to nail that down. “I have more resources and time now to look for movies to do outside of this show, so there’s a lot of silver linings, and I really just can’t wait to see my friends take the reins,” he says.
The actor can’t help but repeating what a blessing the show has been for him, and that he’s been savoring every moment. It’s also not lost on him that in finally getting his leading man moment, he’s able to show people the type of layered performance he loves. “I’ve waited a really long time for my chance to be the lead on a TV show. Hopefully audiences see that I worked really hard and can resonate with Garrett’s story,” he says. “But I think what’s more important to me is that the people I worked with see me as somebody they can trust with that type of responsibility.”
Adds Cameli, “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be. It’s the coolest thing, and I’m hoping this show will garner attention and that may help me in audition rooms and meetings with directors. But what’s more important to me is that my reputation says that I’m somebody good to work with.”
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