The Love Hypothesis Cast and Character Guide

Prime Video’s The Love Hypothesis arrives with one of the more recognizable setups in contemporary romance fiction: an ambitious scientist, an intimidating professor and a fake relationship that proves much harder to control than either of them expects. Claire Scanlon’s adaptation of Ali Hazelwood’s bestselling novel puts Lili Reinhart and Tom Bateman at the center, but the movie’s academic world depends just as much on Olive’s friends and colleagues as it does on the central couple. Rachel Marsh, Jaboukie Young-White, Nicholas Duvernay and Arty Froushan make up the principal supporting ensemble, with several additional actors filling out Stanford’s faculty and research community.

Related: The Love Hypothesis Filming Locations

Lili Reinhart as Olive Smith

Lili Reinhart plays Olive Smith, a Ph.D. candidate whose professional life is considerably more organized than her romantic one. Olive wants a future in scientific research, but when she realizes that her best friend Anh is interested in Jeremy, someone Olive previously dated, she tries to prove that she has completely moved on. Her solution is to kiss Adam Carlsen and eventually agree to a pretend relationship with him, creating the experiment around which the movie’s romance develops.

Reinhart remains most closely associated with Betty Cooper from Riverdale, although her film work includes Chemical Hearts, Hustlers, Look Both Ways and American Sweatshop. She is also an executive producer on The Love Hypothesis, giving her involvement in the adaptation a role beyond simply playing Olive. Reinhart has said that she personally had little in common with Olive’s scientific background, but valued portraying a woman whose ambitions in STEM remain an important part of her identity.

Tom Bateman as Dr. Adam Carlsen

Tom Bateman plays Dr. Adam Carlsen, the professor whose severe reputation initially makes him seem like the least convenient person Olive could have chosen for her spontaneous display of affection. Instead of immediately ending the misunderstanding, Adam agrees to participate in the arrangement, and their carefully negotiated relationship gradually becomes more complicated. Prime Video describes him as an intimidating professor, while the movie preserves the contrast between Olive’s nervous energy and Adam’s much more controlled personality.

Bateman has spent much of his screen career in dramas and thrillers rather than straightforward romantic comedies. His credits include Behind Her Eyes, Vanity Fair, Death on the Nile, Thirteen Lives, Based on a True Story and Hedda. Bateman has said that working in the romantic-comedy format appealed to him partly because the movie depended so heavily on the chemistry between its two leads, something he and Reinhart began establishing during their first remote read-through before filming started in Montreal.

Rachel Marsh as Anh Pham

Rachel Marsh plays Anh Pham, Olive’s best friend and fellow graduate student. Anh’s feelings for Jeremy are the reason Olive starts pretending that she is romantically involved with someone else, making her friendship with Olive one of the relationships that quietly sets the entire plot in motion. Reinhart has described Olive and Anh’s friendship as foundational to the story rather than treating Anh as a supporting character who exists only to comment on the central romance.

Marsh has become increasingly visible across television in the years leading up to The Love Hypothesis. She played Luna Castillo in Unstable, appeared as Carly in Adults and joined Fallout as Claudia, alongside work in The Morning Show. Marsh has said that she read Hazelwood’s novel after becoming involved with the adaptation and became attached not only to Anh but to the friendship at the center of Olive’s life.

Jaboukie Young-White as Malcolm Browne

Jaboukie Young-White plays Malcolm Browne, Olive’s roommate and one of her closest friends inside the Stanford graduate-school circle. Malcolm provides another relationship outside Adam that helps keep Olive’s life from revolving entirely around the fake-dating arrangement. Early reviews have particularly noted the easy friendship between Olive, Anh and Malcolm, which gives the film a warmer ensemble quality than it would have if the supporting characters existed solely to push the romance forward.

Young-White moves comfortably between live-action comedy, writing and voice work. His screen credits include Dating & New York, C’mon C’mon, Only Murders in the Building and Companion, while animation audiences may recognize his voice from Strange World and Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken. That comedic background makes Malcolm a natural role for him, but the character also functions as part of Olive’s support system when her academic and personal lives begin intersecting more seriously.

Nicholas Duvernay as Jeremy Langley

Nicholas Duvernay portrays Jeremy Langley, Olive’s former romantic interest and the man Anh develops feelings for. Jeremy does not need to be the movie’s second romantic lead to be essential to its premise, since Olive’s effort to remove herself from the situation involving him and Anh is what leads directly to Adam. Prime Video identifies Jeremy as Olive’s crush, while the film makes his position in their shared social circle part of the reason Olive’s supposedly simple deception has to look convincing.

Duvernay may be most familiar from the third season of The White Lotus, where he played Zion Lindsey. His earlier credits include Purple Hearts, Bel-Air and The Winchesters, and he also appears in the adaptation of Reminders of Him. Duvernay has acknowledged that his casting differs physically from how some readers imagined Jeremy from the novel, but he has encouraged viewers to approach the adaptation as its own interpretation of Hazelwood’s characters.

Arty Froushan as Dr. Thomas Benton

Arty Froushan plays Dr. Thomas Benton, an academic figure whose connection to Olive’s research becomes increasingly important as her career develops. The character belongs to the more professionally serious side of the story, reminding viewers that Olive’s decisions are being made while she is also trying to establish herself as a scientist. Avoiding detailed discussion of his later involvement is useful for a cast guide, since Benton becomes more significant as the movie approaches its final stretch.

Froushan already has considerable experience in large-scale television productions. He played Jonah Breakspear in Carnival Row, appeared as Qarl Correy in House of the Dragon and joined Daredevil: Born Again as Buck Cashman. His casting gives the academic supporting ensemble another performer familiar with characters whose outward confidence does not necessarily reveal everything happening beneath the surface.

Jeananne Goossen and the Stanford faculty

Jeananne Goossen appears as Dr. Juliet Aslan, while Aladeen Tawfeek plays Dr. Eugene Fastuca. Kenny Wong is credited as McConnell, Daniel Brochu appears as Dr. Hargrave and Howard Bilerman plays Dr. Keeney, expanding the faculty and research environment around Olive and Adam. These characters receive considerably less promotional attention than the central six, but their presence helps make Stanford feel like a functioning academic community rather than a campus populated only by people directly involved in Olive’s relationship.

That larger ensemble matters more in The Love Hypothesis than it might in a romance set somewhere less specialized. Olive’s professional goals remain part of the story even when her arrangement with Adam becomes increasingly personal, and the supporting faculty members give those ambitions a recognizable institutional setting. Scanlon’s adaptation consequently surrounds its leads with enough scientists, graduate students and colleagues to keep the movie connected to the academic world that made Hazelwood’s original novel distinctive.

The ensemble keeps Olive’s life bigger than the romance

Reinhart and Bateman inevitably carry most of the attention because The Love Hypothesis is built around Olive and Adam’s changing relationship, but the adaptation benefits from not treating everyone else as decoration. Anh and Malcolm establish the friendships Olive already has before Adam becomes important to her, Jeremy creates the misunderstanding that begins the arrangement, and Benton connects the romantic plot back to Olive’s professional ambitions.

That balance is particularly appropriate for a movie about a character whose career matters to her almost as much as her personal life. Prime Video’s adaptation may use one of romance fiction’s most familiar devices, but its cast gives the story enough of an academic and social world that Olive’s life does not begin and end with the man she agrees to pretend to date.