When Belmont Cameli booked his lead role on Off Campus, Amazon Prime Video’s new college hockey romance series, he faced an immediate and concrete problem: he could not skate. He solved it the only way he knows how — by getting on the ice immediately and staying there until he could.
“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,” the 28-year-old Illinois-born actor said. “I trained for a while by myself in LA and then for a couple more weeks when we got to Vancouver with all the guys.”
The show, based on the bestselling book series by Elle Kennedy, follows the hockey team and their relationships at the fictional Briar University. Cameli plays Garrett Graham, an NHL-bound team captain whose womanizing reputation conceals a fraught relationship with his legendary professional-player father. Each season will spotlight a different couple, with Season 1 centering on Garrett and music student Hannah Wells, played by Ella Bright. The show has already been renewed for a second season.
Critics have responded warmly. Variety called the show “a perfectly predictable delight” and praised the chemistry between Bright and Cameli. The Hollywood Reporter described it as “winningly sweet.”
The series arrives in the slipstream of Heated Rivalry, the Canadian hockey drama that broke out globally, and comparisons are inevitable. Cameli welcomes them. “The way I see it is that the success of Heated Rivalry is a huge success in television,” he said. “To see it percolate globally is a huge win for me as an actor and as a member of this industry. I love when shit like that happens.”
The role carries personal weight for Cameli, who endured two lean years around the Hollywood strikes before landing Off Campus. His path to acting was itself accidental. A finance student in college, he pivoted after his father died shortly after he arrived at school. “All of a sudden, life felt really short, and it felt really important that I figured out what I wanted to do,” he said. Modelling jobs in Chicago led to agency representation, and eventually to Los Angeles.
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“I’ve waited a really long time for my chance to be the lead on a TV show,” Cameli said. “What’s more important to me is that my reputation says that I’m somebody good to work with.”
