‘Off Campus’ Star Mika Abdalla Is Ready For Her Next Chapter off campus, mika abdalla, prime video, off campus books, off campus series

'OFF CAMPUS' STAR

ABDALLA

For Abdalla — who learned discipline from a young age, having grown up riding horses — finishing what she started was non-negotiable. “I wanted to get [my] degree to honor that part of my life.” That same grit was required when she stepped onto the set of Off Campus. Much like a freshman’s first week on campus, Abdalla felt the weight of the moment. "The first couple days on set, I was so nervous and so scared," she says. After she re-centered herself in her body, "I just got a clear head.” After all, playing the part of Allie felt kismet.

Allie has a “big, outgoing, center-of-attention personality” with plans of moving to New York and living out her acting dreams. Series author Elle Kennedy tells Her Campus that Allie’s character is “funny and full of life,” two traits that very much mirror Abdalla’s own. “I felt very connected to who Allie is,” Abdalla says. Her co-star Ella Bright saw that Allie-Abdalla connection, too. “Honestly, there’s not a huge difference between Mika on and off set,” Bright tells Her Campus. “The same fun, energy, and laughter were always there.” Abdalla originally auditioned to play Bright’s character, Hannah, but notes, with a laugh, that it was “so incorrect.” Hannah is a music major whose songwriting is a focal point to her storyline. “I would not consider myself a singer or a musician. I cannot play any instruments,” Abdalla says. “But it was less so that I wasn't drawn to Hannah as much as I was really drawn to Allie.”

MAY 2026

I wanted to get [my] degree to honor that part of my life.

MIKA ABDALLA

While Allie may not be part of the main love story in Season 1, she’s far from just a supporting character. Book three of Kennedy’s series, The Score, is where Allie shines. She breaks up with her long-term boyfriend, Sean, and starts hooking up with ladies’ man Dean in secret. A lot of the groundwork for Allie and Dean’s on-screen story is laid in Off Campus Season 1 — a major deviation from the books. “I didn't want to have to generate a brand-new love story from scratch every season. I wanted it to be planted in the season prior,” Levy says. Allie and Dean are very much planted, and even if Levy won’t confirm the speculation, fans are already clamoring for the pair to lead Season 2. “I cannot say anything about that yet,” she laughs. “I promise that answers will come soon, though.” While Allie’s entire arc hasn’t played out on screen, the depth Abdalla brings to her character is evident in a brutally emotional scene between Hannah and Allie in Episode 8. “We couldn’t stop crying,” Bright says. “That scene was extra special because it was the one we used for our chemistry read, so getting to revisit it on set felt really full-circle.” Both actresses consider it their most notable performance together. “It's a terrible scene for the body to do, but it was one of my favorites,” Abdalla says. “We just had such a strong friendship at that time.” Bright and Abdalla’s real-life relationship evolved in lock-step with their characters’. “Mika and I were actually living in the same apartment complex while filming, so we were constantly together,” Bright says. “There was always a real sense of trust in our scenes.”

She also has recs for college students looking to pick up a book themselves, and fittingly, one is the source material of another highly anticipated adaptation coming in 2026. “Pride and Prejudice,” she says. “[I read it] in a very kitschy little castle hotel in England recently, drinking tea. I was like, this life could literally not get better.” It’s easy to look at Abdalla now and assume she’s always moved through the world with this kind of clarity. But that wasn’t necessarily the case — it was an evolution. “People do not have it together as much as you think they do,” she says. “What really improved my mental health and my life was [faking it]. A lot. I just faked confidence. I faked knowing what I was doing. Even down to my first time doing laundry on my own at school. The world's not going to end. Nothing's going to explode. If you do something wrong, you're just learning to live.” Her secret, it turns out, goes back to the Texas native’s roots — and those horses she grew up riding. That fact, she acknowledges, “seems super irrelevant, but it does actually connect.” In fact, it more than connects — it’s the very thing that will serve her as she prepares to lead the Off Campus series into the next chapter. “When you're riding a horse and you start to panic, you tense up. You bend your knees and you shrink into a ball because you're trying to protect yourself. But all that does is put you off balance,” Abdalla says. “You're supposed to take a deep breath and put your heels down, which is so uncomfortable for the first five seconds. But then, everything improves, you're reconnected, you're in control, and things get more stable. That's something that I've always repeated to myself. When things get a little tense or I'm a little nervous, I just have to breathe and tell myself in my head, just put your heels down. Put your heels down.”

For series showrunner Louisa Levy, Abdalla was Allie before she even stepped into the audition room. When Amazon executives came to hear Levy and co-showrunner Gina Fattore's pitch for the show, they didn’t have a cast yet, but wanted to display photos to represent the characters. "My assistant actually put together fake Instagram grids for each of them. We needed people who evoked the character's energy more than just look,” Levy tells Her Campus. “I found Mika and a lot of her photos in Snack Shack, and her Instagram page … she just felt like Allie to me. And so we have this fake Instagram profile for Allie that is Mika, and it was well before she ever came to audition.” Kennedy, who also serves as a producer on the Prime Video series, similarly felt Abdalla’s strong ties to Allie early on. “Mika is larger than life on screen and her comedic timing is gold, but she also shows that softer, vulnerable side of Allie that you see in the book. It’s such a great combination, and Mika nails it.”

When things geta little tense, I tell myself in my head, just put your heels down.

Photographer: Max Montgomery • Stylist: Kate Li • Hair: Fitch Lunar • Makeup: Mai QuynhWriter: Tina Kolokathis • Editor: Lexi Williams • Designer: EJ De Jesus All opinions are 100% our own. © Her Campus Media 2026

MIKA ABDALLA

ika Abdalla has big plans for her birthday. “I’m probably going to go to all my favorite little dive bars in New York,” she says with an easy smile. The Off Campus star happens to be celebrating her 26th trip around the sun on May 13, the same day the new college romance TV series — adapted from Elle Kennedy’s bestselling book series of the same name — premieres on Prime Video. She’s in town from LA to promote the show, but after those duties are done, you may catch her in the West Village at Cellar Dog, or maybe Bobo. She can't quite recall the name of the other bar she likes, but that's a minor detail. “I don't remember what they're called. I just know where they are. I just start walking, and I'm like, ‘This is where I'm going.’” Abdalla just knows she’ll end up in the right place. That natural self-assuredness is exactly what makes Abdalla shine in Off Campus's ensemble cast. The show is a heady cocktail of The Summer I Turned Pretty’s “will-they-won’t-they,” Heated Rivalry’s hot hockey tension, and Bridgerton’s rotating romantic leads (all three shows are also book adaptations). Following the order of the novels, Off Campus’s first season focuses on Hannah Wells (played by Ella Bright) and her “fake-deal-to-real” romance with Briar University hockey team captain Garrett Graham (Belmont Cameli), with Abdalla playing Allie, Hannah’s magnetic, ride-or-die best friend. This first season shows Allie as a grounding North Star on Hannah’s journey, but fans of the books know that’s not all that’s in store for Allie — or Abdalla, for that matter. She’ll take center stage in an upcoming season of the show when her romance with Garrett’s teammate, Dean Di Laurentis (Stephen Kalyn), becomes the focal point of the plot. Though Abdalla’s done her fair share of acting — she had her breakout role in Netflix’s Project Mc² at 15, starred in 2024’s Snack Shack, and has appeared in well-loved shows like The Pitt and Suits LA — Off Campus is Abdalla’s first major adaptation, and one with a rabid fan base at that. While the show’s viewers will notice differences from the books, Abdalla insists the team worked to keep the spirit alive. “We really tried our best to honor [the books] as much as we could, and use it as source material,” Abdalla says. “Elle Kennedy created these characters, and these are the characters that people fell in love with.” Off Campus portrays life in college, from the relatable (talking to your crush at a party) to the ridiculous (walking into a hockey locker room and being greeted by a dozen naked men). While Abdalla’s own college experience — she entered her freshman year in 2017 — was light on the nude athletes, she’s no stranger to the chaos of campus life. “I had five roommates in my dorm at UCLA,” she says with a soft laugh.

Abdalla graduated from high school a year early, stopped auditioning for roles, and “dabbled in being a kid” while on campus. She entered the entertainment industry at the age of 6 — booking magazine covers and commercial roles — so turning all of that off during her early college experience felt freeing. She attended some eventful college football games while she was at it, too. “I went to a big UCLA-USC game. I got punched by a very drunk USC sorority girl.” Abdalla feigns indignation. “We were walking towards the stadium. She saw me, and she did not like the UCLA of it all. And she gave me a good, solid punch in the arm,” she recalls. “So that was fun!” After the pandemic, Abdalla turned her focus back to work, moving college to the back burner (she took part-time classes online) and booking projects like the Hulu original film Sex Appeal (which she starred in with her now-fiancé, Jake Short) and CW’s The Flash. Though her career was on solid footing, graduating from college (with a BA in philosophy and minor in film) was still a priority — even if it took her seven years. “I come from a very academic family," Abdalla says. She points to her grandmother, who grew up on a tiny farm in rural Bulgaria, as the first person in her family to get a degree. "Education was really important to her, and she passed that on to my dad, who then instilled that in me early on,” she says.

It's a terrible scene for the body to do,but it was one of my favorites.

MAY 2026

MIKA

THE OFF CAMPUS STAR IS READY FOR HER NEXT CHAPTER

As Abdalla heads into her 26th year, she’s looking toward her future. One of her goals for the next 12 months of her life is quite grounded: “I would like to read more. I got really into reading fiction [this last year], obviously,” she says. (She read Kennedy’s Off Campus books once she got her first audition.) But for 2026, “I would like to read more nonfiction.” Her TBR is topped with books by Brené Brown, Larry Moss, and Jeff Bridges. “I would also like to read more about history. I want to read something that I don’t know anything about.”