Jalen Thomas Brooks brought Off Campus’ John Tucker to life in the new romance series — but he opted against reading the source material first.
“I’m the only person who hasn’t [read it] because of the differences that Tucker has in the series than the books,” Brooks, 24, told Entertainment Tonight in an interview published Wednesday, May 13. “Since Tucker’s younger now in the show and he’s older in the book, I wanted to leave it.”
Off Campus, the bestselling college hockey book series by author Elle Kennedy, follows four hockey players at the fictional Briar University as they balance classes, athletics and romance. Tucker takes the lead in the fourth book, titled The Goal, opposite aspiring law student Sabrina James.
Season 1 of Prime Video’s adaptation premiered on Wednesday, May 13, following Tucker’s teammate Garrett Graham (Belmont Cameli) as he finds love with Hannah Wells (Ella Bright). Tucker’s eventual love interest has yet to be introduced.
Throughout season 1, Tucker appears in a supporting role before he eventually takes the lead. (Off Campus has already been renewed for season 2, though it’s not known which Briar U couple will lead it.)
“[Without reading the book is] allowing me to … get there,” Brooks added to ET.
Tucker’s age isn’t the only change from the beloved book series, though the cast and showrunner Louisa Levy have defended the onscreen tweaks.
“It’s definitely great to have the blueprint of this fabulous book series to start with, but adapting for a TV show is a little bit different,” Levy exclusively told Us Weekly ahead of Wednesday’s premiere. “We need to keep the audience’s focus in a different way. We have a lot of stories told in different ways. We have eight episodes instead of the whole book. So, we really started with the things that were super nonnegotiable — that without those things it wouldn’t be Off Campus.”
Without ignoring the franchise’s most iconic moments, Levy and her team still sought to make the Prime Video show their own.
“We added as many of the book moments as we could,” she explained. “We dropped them in like Easter eggs, and we just really spent time taking one’s inside character and externalizing them.”
While the first season is focused on Garrett and Hannah’s stories, the two actors are also likely to return for future episodes.
“We will be along for the ride the whole time,” Cameli, 28, exclusively told Us earlier this month. “We are so lucky. Ella and I are really, really good friends. We get along so well and we spend a ton of time together on set.”
Off Campus season 1 is now streaming on Prime Video.
