Inside the Herculean task of perfecting “Percy Jackson and the Olympians”

Rick Riordan's beloved books are finally getting a worthy adaptation. The stars, creators, and producers tell EW about the hard work of adaptation.

Percy Jackson is exhausted. The 12-year-old demigod has spent all day trying to save the world from… a lack of chemistry.

It’s audition time — but not for Walker Scobell, who was cast early as the titular hero of the new Disney+ series Percy Jackson and the Olympians. With the protagonist in place, the rest of the cast has to be fit around him, especially the crucial roles of Grover Underwood and Annabeth Chase, Percy’s best friends who accompany him on his adventures through modern-day Greek mythology. That means chemistry reads with every possible combination of costars.

As Scobell remembers it, there were 11 candidates competing to play his onscreen best friends, which meant about 30 different trios. Since the young star had to do about three takes with each group, that was almost 100 iterations in all.

“When we finished my chemistry read, I just remember feeling so bad for Walker,” Aryan Simhadri, who ultimately won the role of the satyr Grover, tells EW. “He was very clearly exhausted. There were multiple Grovers at the chemistry read. And so James [Bobin], the director of the first couple episodes, was like, ‘Alright, let’s move onto the next.’ And Walker was just like, ‘That wasn’t it? There’s more??’ I felt so bad.”

All these months later, as he sits next to Simhadri in a joint Zoom interview, Scobell still has his game face on, like a true professional.

“I mean, obviously it was a lot of fun,” he assures us. “I got to hang out with Rick the whole day!”

That’s Rick Riordan he’s referring to, the prolific novelist who began this whole saga nearly 20 years ago when he first published The Lightning Thief. The story of a young misfit boy learning he’s the son of a Greek god — and that all the scary monsters and scheming deities of classical mythology are alive and well in present-day America — was such a rousing success with young readers that it spawned four sequels and several spinoff series where Riordan brought the same treatment to other ancient mythologies: Roman in Heroes of Olympus, Egyptian in The Kane Chronicles, and Norse in Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard.

But Percy Jackson and the Olympians was the first and best. And, much like Taylor Swift, its appeal to young fans has only grown over time. If you passed by New York’s Prospect Park this summer, decades after the original publication of The Lightning Thief, you were likely to see kids running around in orange T-shirts for Camp Half-Blood (the collection of cabins where Percy and friends learn about their heritage and hone their skills) as they play-acted with homemade swords and shields.

The fandom around Percy and Riordan is strong — and loyal, having survived even after a lackluster first attempt at adaptation. In 2010, at the height of Harry Potter and Twilight mania, The Lightning Thief was made into a movie starring Logan Lerman, Alexandria Daddario, and Brandon T. Jackson as Percy, Annabeth, and Grover. It did just well enough at the box office to justify a sequel (which adapted the second book in the series, Sea of Monsters) but didn’t spawn a film franchise worthy of the wealth of the material or passion of the fanbase. So when Percy Jackson and the Olympians premieres on Dec. 20, the Disney+ series hopes to finally do justice to Camp Half-Blood on screen.

“This is a larger canvas,” Riordan tells EW in a joint interview with his wife Becky, both of whom are executive producers on the show. “It gives us the time to tell the story properly in an episodic manner, which fits the books. We were very lucky to get a team that agreed with that approach.”

Doing the series as a TV show rather than a film franchise allowed the creators to better reflect the format of the books, and making it in 2023 allowed for a fresh perspective to the characters. Far from insisting the show be word-perfect to the text, the Riordans were very willing to try new ideas. Black actress Leah Jeffries was ultimately cast as Annabeth, even though the character was originally white and blonde. But inclusion has always been a source of strength in Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Percy’s dyslexia, inspired by the Riordans’ own son, is what allows him to see magic and monsters in the first place.

Speaking of monsters, expect a more fleshed-out characterization for the legendary snake-haired Medusa (Jessica Parker Kennedy) on the new show. “In my book, Medusa was pretty much a standard villain. She just comes and goes, and you don’t really get into it too much,” Riordan says. “So it was really fun to work on episode 3 with Jessica. The script was a lot more nuanced, and I think you see a lot more from Medusa’s point of view, which makes it a lot richer.”

“What happens to Percy throughout is that his ideas about both heroes and monsters are challenged constantly,” adds Becky. “That was something we were allowed to play with on this show that you don’t see in the movie at all.”

But no matter how you tell the story, Percy Jackson and the Olympians will rely heavily on its title character. Luckily, to Riordan and the producers, Scobell is Percy. “The whole team is in agreement: Walker Scobell was born for this part,” says the author, who should know. “Don't get me wrong, he's incredibly talented. I'm sure he was born for a lot of roles! But he really is perfect for this. He has that voice down so well, and he embodies who Percy is.”

A major element of that is age. At 14 years old, Scobell is much closer to Percy’s textual age of 12 than Lerman, who was 18 when he made The Lightning Thief. “When [co-showrunner] Jon [Steinberg] and Rick sent me the script for the first time, in the first scene description it said 'Percy Jackson [12],’” Bobin recalls. “And I just went, ‘Brilliant! Exactly right.’ Because the eyes of a 12-year-old are very different from the eyes of an older kid. I have a kid and a teenager, so I know this: A 12-year-old and a 17-year-old are different universes. A 12-year-old is still young-ish, but is learning so much and still has a really magical appreciation of the world.”

Filming what a 12-year-old sees sometimes means literally filming what a 12-year-old sees, which is why several crucial scenes were shot from the young protagonist’s eye level. A particularly impactful example comes early in the first episode, when Percy and his mother, Sally (Virginia Kull), are on the run from the legendary Minotaur. The camera stays in the car with our hero, as we only get glimpses of the pursuing monster at first.

“Whatever you see in the show, you'll see it through Percy's eyes,” Bobin says. “I love the feeling in that Minotaur sequence because it's very immersive. You're trapped in that small space. And so when the Minotaur’s horn comes through the windshield, it's scary because that's happening to you.”

The Minotaur sequence is key because it separates Percy from his mother, creating his motivation for the rest of the season. Here, again, age matters. While a teenager would probably make any excuse to be independent of their parents, a younger kid still feels that bond deeply. “The god stuff is important, but really it's about a boy saving his mom,” Bobin says.

Sally is important not just to Percy, but to his creator as well. The Riordans are much more involved in the show than they were in the movies. They both were on set often and gave notes on scripts — quite a change, Rick says, from the typically solitary work of a novelist. One of their biggest interventions was making sure the show focused on Percy’s love for his mortal mom over his divine dad.

“We were in a meeting with the execs about how to show Percy's journey, and they were like, ‘Well, Percy really needs to want to see his father,’” Becky recalls. “And so I had to say, ‘Hey, this is not the story. Percy is doing this for his mom. His father needs to earn Percy's respect because he hasn't been there for him.'”

The series makes clear that the contentious relationship between Olympian gods and their demigod children is not too different from your own dynamic with your parents or friends — which is how Riordan took Greek mythology, which kids often associate with homework, and made it accessible to them in the novels. “That, to me, was part of the fun, just trying to be in Percy's headspace as he meets these family members who are a little out there,” Steinberg says. Co-showrunner Dan Shotz adds, “No one wants to invite Ares to Thanksgiving.”

In their quest to rescue Sally, Percy and his friends encounter some of the legendary gods. Lin-Manuel Miranda shows up as the tricky messenger Hermes, while Adam Copeland trades his wrestling garb for the long black coat of Ares. But even before the kids come face-to-face with Ares, they — and viewers — learn a lot about the war god from his daughter, Clarisse (Dior Goodjohn). Though she initially comes off like the big bully at Camp Half-Blood, Clarisse may just be trying to impress her violent father. “The reason she works so hard and overcompensates is, in my own opinion, because she just wants to be acknowledged by her dad,” Goodjohn explains. “But in my version of it, it'll never happen because I'm not his son.”

After all, despite these glimpses of the gods, the show is really about how their kids navigate this monster-filled world. The young actors impressed all of their adult collaborators with their willingness to put in the effort. Scobell, for one, worked 150 of the 160 days of production on season 1 — and they were not easy days. “They were physical and emotional,” Shotz says. “We’d go from one thing to the next. One day you’re hanging off of an arch, and the next day you're in a train telling your personal story of what you went through.”

While shooting the series in Vancouver over the summer, the actors say they particularly struggled with hot temperatures, especially when combined with heavy armor and costumes. Which brings us to the epic Capture the Flag sequence. A regular event at Camp Half-Blood, the demigod version of Capture the Flag has inspired real-life imitations among young fans and generated incredible excitement when teased at this year’s New York Comic Con. But filming it was extremely challenging, even for someone like Jeffries, who Bobin says is known for her “placid observation and silent authority” while playing the daughter of the wise goddess Athena.

“That day it was so hot and I had all that dark armor on me. I was dying,” Jeffries recalls. “And then on top of that, a spider actually crawled up inside of my armor. It literally looked like a poisonous spider. It was big and black. I felt something tickling me, and I looked down as its head was going right up into my arm guard. I was about to cry. That was really bad.”

Bobin — who was first introduced to the Percy Jackson books years ago by his kids — has very vivid memories of shooting Capture the Flag, because it was the one time his children came to set. “My son's birthday was on the day we were shooting,” Bobin says. “The props guy said to me, ‘You know what? We've got a spare set, he can have this whole set of Greek armor to take home with him.’ So at the end of day, I called everyone over and said, ‘This is Wilkie’s birthday and as a present, he's allowed to keep his armor.’ I've never seen him so happy.”

Not every viewer of Percy Jackson and the Olympians will get their own set of custom armor, but the creators and stars hope that the new adaptation will be just as happy of a present for those who have waited so long. Though future seasons have yet to be officially announced, the team is hopeful that they can bring this same care to Percy’s full five-book saga (and longtime fans should keep their eyes out even in season 1 for Easter eggs and hints of things to come). It will take even more hard work, of course — after all, there are still major characters to cast, like Athena. Somebody clear Walker Scobell’s schedule!

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