Mika Abdalla Interview

This summer is set to be a whirlwind for Mika Abdalla. 

She’s jetting off to Brazil for work soon, then to New York for a week of press, then straight back to Vancouver to film. It certainly makes Off Campus live up to its name. 

The Prime Video series has been a long time coming. Fans of Elle Kennedy’s series of the same name – featuring five books that have sold over 10 million copies worldwide – have been campaigning for a screen adaptation since its earliest publication in 2015.

Now, finally, the show is set to premiere on May 12th, with a second season already in the works—and Mika’s still catching her breath. 

It’s a familiar rhythm for rising actors: land the job, hit the ground running and figure it out in real time. But Off Campus was anything but routine.

The stakes were higher, the material was heavier, and the pressure was mounting. As Allie, Mika plays one of the story’s most beloved and central characters, embodying a spirit she claims is even larger than her own; caught in a constant conflict of wanting freedom and control of her own life while craving emotional connection and stability. 

Much is the same for Mika’s battle as an actor. She’s now learning what happens when the thing you’ve been waiting for actually arrives—and doesn’t slow down. To have fun without chasing a perfect take. To trust her instincts when scripts arrive just in the nick of time. To give her roles her all without losing herself in the process. 

And no one understands that game quite like her Snack Shack co-star, Gabe LaBelle. The pair met two years ago when the Paramount comedy first aired, instantly bonding over the off-kilter throes of thespian life. 

So, while Off Campus remains better protected than the Vatican itself, it was Gabe whom Mika trusted most to get a sneak peek. And during her (now very rare) rest time, he couldn’t help but call—getting the inside track before the world even knows what’s coming.

GABE LABELLE: Where are you right now?

MIKA ABDALLA: I'm still home. I don't leave for like three or four weeks. It’s insane, the press lines up right before we start shooting again—so I'm gonna be home for like two days between press and shooting. It's crazy.

GABE: Is this one of the first things you're doing in press? 

MIKA: Yeah. We start Amazon-driven press on the 27th here. And then we go to Brazil for a week, and then New York for a week, and then straight back to Vancouver.

GABE: You’re going to Brazil?!

MIKA: Yeah, dude, it's great. None of us has ever been there.

GABE: Holy shit. Is it like a premiere in Brazil? 

MIKA: Look, I have no idea. [Laughs.] The books have a huge fan base in Brazil, so that’s why they're doing it. And also, Brazilian fans are just the best. I'm taking my dad with me, which is going to be hilarious. 

GABE: How have you been? 

MIKA: I’ve been really good. I've been doing nothing, finally, which is awesome.

GABE: So I watched Off Campus. They sent me a link. And I got to watch it on the train from Cologne to Berlin—and I knew nothing about it. And it comes on, and it's like, “Oh, what a nice, charming, wholesome rom-com.” And then all of a sudden, there's like boobs and banging, and it's so sexy… And I'm on a public train. Nobody warned me about how sexy the show is, and I'm sitting there overwhelmed at how attractive everybody is on this show with the muscle montages and stuff—it was hilarious, but it's a lot of fun. Everyone's so charming!

MIKA: The books are very much like that. Honestly, the show is still very sexy, but the books are like SO sexy. I feel like Louisa [Levy] and Gina [Fattore] did a really good job of translating that to the screen and keeping the charm in there and keeping the sex in there—I’m glad you like it.

GABE: It reminds me of Blue Mountain State, but also for the girls. It's got the rom-com formula, but it's not glossed over. These are extreme stakes that these people are going through, and it feels real as well as being this charming, super fun rom-com.

MIKA: Absolutely, it's so rooted in both Hannah and Garrett's stories, and they're both really important topics to cover. And we dig into it a lot more later on in the season. Episodes one and two are very fun, and you get a little peek into what's behind everything and what's underneath for both of them, but as the season goes on, it takes kind of a turn… Not that you wouldn't expect, necessarily, but it definitely gets very real.  

GABE: They start planting some really dark seeds in the first two episodes. They sent me a big disclaimer of things I can’t talk about yet, though… I’m not even allowed to talk about the music—

MIKA: —Really?!

GABE: None of the songs, none of the composers. But the music's so good in it.  

MIKA: Wait… Real quick… Do you know the composer from Snack Shack is the guy behind the music: Keegan [DeWitt]?!

GABE: I fucking figured! Because there were some moments where I was literally transported. There were a lot of similarities. I could feel his style. 

MIKA: His aura is in there. 

GABE: Yeah. And dude, you're so good in this. I love watching you. You're so charming in this role. 

MIKA: Thank you!

GABE: When you're playing someone, are you cranking up your own natural charm or are you stepping completely into a new character? Because it feels like you, but it's also not you. It's just very lived in. How did you approach playing that role? 

MIKA: I think the thing with Allie is she is like me in a lot of ways, but she has a lot more energy than I do, you know? She's a much bigger person, I think, than I am. And so I have a lot of friends who helped me make sense of why Allie is doing this thing and to kind of ground her, as opposed to just letting her be in this state of flying so close to the sun in a high-energy bubble. It was finding a way to make Allie's story real to me, because I can be a big and loud and centre of attention type person in life, but it takes certain circumstances for me to get there, you know? I originally auditioned for Hannah, and I knew that wasn't right—and everyone knew that wasn't right. And so thank God they wanted to see me for Allie. ‘Cause then, when I was finally able to read the script, I was like, “Oh, absolutely. This is for me.” I was familiar with the books already, too. 

GABE: You’re perfect for that role. 

MIKA: Yeah, I was like, “This is just 100% me.” And then as we got into production, I was able to see different parts of her personality that weren’t necessarily me, but I could see in other people in my life. 

GABE: How was the experience shooting it? 

MIKA: It was amazing. Everyone was so fun—literally everyone. I love my cast mates so much. And it was very similar to Snack Shack. Like, we just hung out all the time after work, and it didn't really feel like work at all. I mean, there were obviously days that were tough and emotional, and we had to kind of take things a little more seriously, but it was overall amazing. And Vancouver is my favourite place on the planet during the summer. 

GABE: Dude, summer in Vancouver is incredible.

MIKA: It's so incredible that I forgot what the rest of the year is like, and I had to go back for some fittings in March, and I was like, “Oh, this is the price that you pay.” 

GABE: I remember growing up there, and I forgot how gloomy it is the rest of the year. You guys shot at UBC, right? 

MIKA: Yeah, a bunch, which was crazy because we have these big Briar U banners up all over the place. It was after the cast had been announced, and you would just see all these people walking by. And the boys, like Belmont [Cameli] and Jalen [Thomas Brooks], are hard to miss—they’re like seven feet tall. At the time, we were still trying to keep so many plot points and so many things under wraps, but it was really cute because there were so many kids who knew who we were and would come up and say hi. 

GABE: Where’s Belmont from? 

MIKA: Chicago. 

GABE: Okay, the hockey boys got it right. Growing up in Vancouver, like, everyone played hockey. And it's really funny seeing the dynamic between the girls group and the guys group on the show, because in my house, the only things people talked about were hockey and theatre. My dad was such a hockey fan, and my brother still plays for two different men's leagues. And so I grew up with all his friends, and then I was a theatre kid. So I'm really familiar with both of these worlds. And I don't get nervous for a movie or a show to get theatre right, but I felt protective over the hockey culture and all those boys. But all those actors do such a great job, and they like NAILED the hockey accent, which made me so happy.

MIKA: Stephen [Kalyn] was the only one who had ever played hockey at all. Stephen’s from Toronto. And he grew up playing hockey and is an amazing hockey player. The rest of the boys had never been on skates before. 

GABE: Oh my god, you’d never tell. 

MIKA: Seriously! Antonio [Cipriano] knew how to skate. He had played a little bit of hockey, but they sent the boys up to Vancouver two weeks early to do hockey camp, and they were just training the entire time we were in pre-production. The entire time we were shooting, they would have the boys go play hockey, and they loved their coach so much. I think they just absorbed the essence of that man. And then all of our hockey doubles were really great. We had one guy who plays in the NHL, and he was just so cool—his name is Vincent Iorio. I think the boys just fell in love with hockey.

GABE: It seems like it, 'cause it feels like they've all been on a team together for years. Hockey is getting this massive moment. 

MIKA: It’s extra popular. 

GABE: Yeah, it's having a real moment, and it just makes me happy that they're getting it right. I love this show because at first, it shows you all the stereotypes of a college show and a rom-com and the dynamics of the guys and the girls. But then it gets incredibly nuanced. And I remember seeing the boys, and I really didn't want it to just be like a fratty, douchey guy culture, but then you see how much these people mean to each other, with the players and the girls and their friend group. And it all just seems very lived in, which is really fun to watch. You just want to hang out with these guys in college. 

MIKA: Yeah. And I think that's really the vibe that we were trying to capture. It was really important to everyone during the casting process that we all really liked each other, because they wanted that kind of vibe to come through the screen—they wanted people to want to hang out with these guys. They wanted people to want to hang out with Ella [Bright] and me. They just wanted it to seem like a fun college environment that you could genuinely see yourself living in and being a part of. And I think leaning into those stereotypes in the beginning makes it sexy. That IS what's sexy…stereotypes are kind of sexy in this college world. And so that pulls you in in the beginning, and then you see who these people really are. 

GABE: It’s funny because the show portrays hyper masculinity in a very smart and real way. A lot of the conversations about masculinity have been about the toxic aspects – and not to say that those don't exist in the show, it can lean into that and be about that – but it's very redeeming and very well written. It’s nice to see a college show for our generation that's not just about the negatives of male culture, but also the positives of it. The show can be for the girls and for the guys, and I feel like rom-coms are very much in the ether as a very feminine kind of product—but I would watch this. 

MIKA: Absolutely. When we all first watched it together, everyone kind of agreed that this is the type of show where, you know, you're a girl, you put it on, and then her brother or her boyfriend or her husband walks in and is like, “Oh, you're watching this hockey romance show, what are you doing?” And then secretly, he lingers behind the couch and realises it's actually good. And the hockey in the show is also good. They did a really good job of making it for the girls, but also not just for the girls.

GABE: Do you have a favourite part about Vancouver? How'd you pass your time when you weren't on set? 

MIKA: I lived right by the marina in Yale Town. Dude, there's no better place on the planet. It was unbelievable. I would just walk along the marina, and everyone lived super close together. And so we would just bump into each other, meet up for food, meet up for a drink, do whatever. My favourite thing about Vancouver in the summer is that, because it's so gloomy the rest of the year, everyone's so happy that the weather's nice, so everyone's outside. Everyone and their dog and their baby is out walking and enjoying life.

GABE: I love that. Back to Off Campus… How are you feeling about the second season? How are you feeling about going back to filming?

MIKA: Really excited, I'm dying to get some scripts. I'm about to freak out on someone. 

GABE: That’s the weirdest thing about shooting TV—the scripts come in so late. 

MIKA: Well, I was talking to someone about this yesterday. It's so different from independent film, obviously, because there are so many different layers of approvals, and there are just so many people reading the script before you can get it. So yeah, getting a script two weeks before you shoot it is insane. 

GABE: It’s bizarre. It's a whole other muscle. And then you have to shoot so much in one day. I remember being a lot more tired making TV. Have you found that your way of working has evolved or shifted in the four or five years since we filmed Snack Shack? 

MIKA: It has. We had a lot of fun doing Snack Shack, and it was great. And I'm proud of what we made—I’m proud of the work that I did. And I wouldn't change anything. I think my character in that allowed me to have a little more fun. I feel like I carried a lot of that with me. I really try to have fun. Anytime things get tough industry-wise, like when I went a year without doing anything, I get really in my head and I get really neurotic. I stopped having fun, and then it stopped being interesting. You can do things technically right, and that's great. But is that the most interesting thing to watch? No. I think I just realised recently that the performances that I admire the most are the ones that are the most shocking and the ones that you wouldn't see just from reading the script.

GABE: A director told me the same thing. And I realised by doing all the prep work, I wasn’t sleeping and turning up to set the next day to have fun and be spontaneous. 

MIKA: Exactly, because you’re not in your body. My favourite moments on set shooting Off Campus were moments where I really connected with whoever I was in a scene with. Ella and I always talk about our favourite moments together, which were just so unprepared. We could just be there as friends and play with each other and feed off of each other. It becomes really meditative, almost. You're just like fucking around and having fun. I've shot movies where I'm sleeping like three, four hours every night. And I feel like death—it feels horrible. 

GABE: So then, with this, were you block shooting or was it in order? 

MIKA: We were block shooting.

GABE: Damn, so how did you wrap your head around it? How did you go about organising your prep for this one? 

MIKA: It was just a lot of putting at the top of the page what had just happened to me. And I'm really fortunate. I just have a really good memory—that’s just kind of how I am. My brain is very organised—so that was never really a thing for me. With my character, a lot happens to me throughout the season. That's kind of difficult to talk about, but there were a couple of moments where I was like, “Oh shit, like two scenes ago, this massive thing just happened.” Or like, “This is where in the world I'm coming from at this moment.” It was a little tricky just because there was a lot of jumping around, but also everyone was so on top of it, Gina and Louisa and all of our directors were very, very organised, and so we just kind of vibed it out—and it worked. 

GABE: How do you find the tonal balance? Because there's so much levity and so much fun. And then they take these serious, sharp, traumatic turns, and then it's fun again, and then you're hanging out again. Was that confusing, or was that easy to sink in and out of?

MIKA: It was pretty easy to sink in and out of. I think that was something that we all really admired about the project going into it. And Ella and Belmont, who have the majority of that kind of emotional back and forth, are both so professional and so incredible. And they were really able to keep it very light and then make it serious when it needed to be serious. Because you know, 90% of the time, the rest of us are just hanging out. I think it was really important to all of us to kind of play into the fun, lighthearted, stereotypical college type of thing. But also, we’re all actors. We were really excited to explore something deeper than that, and so everyone was on the same page about it. Everyone was really game to get serious if we needed to get serious, and then just hang out. It was a very respectful set—not too serious, but no one was fucking around either. My cast mates are amazing, but the crew was also amazing. I hope season two is the same. 

GABE: I can only imagine the mind fuck it will be for it to come out and to receive the reviews while you’re actively shooting. Have you prepared yourself for that? 

MIKA: I decided I think I'm going to delete my Instagram from my phone and just use it on my iPad. I don't think I can delete it, delete it, but I think I just need to not have access to it when I’m bored at the gas station or waiting for my coffee, you know?  

GABE: You should delete it, delete it, though. 

MIKA: I know. I’m so jealous of you with that. But I'm really grateful that we get to all be together for the press when the show comes out. That's gonna be really helpful to mitigate whatever happens, good or bad. 

GABE: Is there a way that you're going to prep for the second season that's different from the first? 

MIKA: That’s a great question. We went in so blind season one, and now, having seen the show and knowing more accurately what we're doing, is something that I haven't really experienced in a long time. I haven't done television in like 10 years. So I think I'm really gonna try to approach it the same way. Again, we had a lot of fun shooting season one, and I just think, naturally, season two is gonna be a little bit different—the bubble will be popped a little, we're not all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and the world isn't so “new” anymore. So I think it'll be different. But I think I'm going to honestly try to be a little more forgiving with myself. In the first four episodes, I was really nervous just because in the past, I was recast from a show after the pilot. So it was a very different situation. It's really hard to let stuff like that go. So I had a lot of anxiety shooting the first four episodes. And it wasn't really until the end that I was able to calm down and, you know, understand that I'm supposed to be there. I am doing the work that I'm meant to be doing. And that's really all I'm in control of.

GABE: Are you usually pretty hard on yourselves on set?

MIKA: I'm usually pretty hard on myself. I don't know why I wasn’t doing Snack Shack, I think Adam [Carter Rehmeier] just created such a comfortable environment, and he's just the most incredible person ever. 

GABE: I’ll go to the moon for that guy. 

MIKA: No, for real. But I'm always pretty hard on myself. 

GABE: I used to be so insecure when a director didn’t say anything after a take. But what's your perspective on that? Because when did you start acting? 

MIKA: I was six.

GABE: Damn. I started when I was eight, but didn't go on screen till I was 11. But as for your relationship to directors from when you were a six-year-old, how would you describe that? 

MIKA: I mean, it's obviously so different when you're six years old—that’s like your teacher, essentially, that's the authority figure. My mum was not an insane stage mum, but she also was the mother of a six-year-old who’s on a set and is mortified when I'm dancing around. But I was a very serious child and a very anxious child. But since I’ve done little bits of everything, and sometimes you're gonna work with a director that you like, but don't necessarily agree with. You're gonna work with someone that you don't vibe with or has their own vision, and they're just gonna get what they want from you. And I've been, in my adult life, exploring like, “What are the bounds of respecting your director but also respecting the work that you've done as an actor? How do you approach that when you disagree with something that a director is asking of you?”

GABE: Did you ever get nervous about acting? When did the stakes start to feel high?

MIKA: When I started to care about it. When I started to care about the product. I feel like when you're a kid – at least for me – I didn't come from a very artistic house. My family loves movies. My parents watch movies all the time, but they're not creative people, necessarily. So I didn't really understand or appreciate film at the time. I didn't appreciate good performances. I just knew what I liked, and I didn't really look any deeper than that. And then when I went to college, I stopped auditioning for six months because I was like, “Oh, I'm a kid, and I'm in college, and this is going to be fun.” And I'm glad I did that, because then I immediately got bored with that and was like, “Never mind!” When I got back into acting, and it became about me – because I wasn't living at home anymore, my mum wasn't on the emails – I enjoyed it more. It was just me talking to my manager, reading my own scripts, living alone in an apartment, watching the movies that I wanted to watch. I started realising what kind of actor I wanted to be—and it then made me insecure about the kind of actor that I was. Which is good, I think. I think it's good to be a little bit insecure. Because that's how you grow and improve. 

GABE: Yeah, you use the nervous energy as rocket fuel. Now we’re at our time limit, and I don’t have any other questions for you other than to say I love you, I'm so excited for you, and I'm really excited for people to watch the show. 

MIKA: I love you. Thank you for doing this!