‘Percy Jackson’ Team Talk Working With Lin-Manuel Miranda, Remember Lance Reddick
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The cast and crew of Percy Jackson and the Olympians took over the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Wednesday night for the New York premiere of the Disney+ series.
Walker Scobell, Leah Sava Jeffries, Aryan Simhadri, Jason Mantsoukas, Glynn Turman, Dior Goodjohn and more of the show’s stars hit the blue carpet to celebrate the series and discussed working with Lin-Manuel Miranda, who has a recurring role as Hermes in the series, and the late Lance Reddick, who plays Zeus.
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“Lin is exactly how you’d expect Lin-Manuel Miranda to be,” Scobell, who plays Percy Jackson in the series, told The Hollywood Reporter. “He’ll randomly just break into song in between takes. It’s hilarious.”
Simhadri, who portrays Grover, shared that working with Miranda was “crazy.” “Getting to work with one of the greatest minds of our generation [on Broadway] and out, I mean, how do you not freak out in that kind of situation?” he told THR.
For executive producers Dan Shotz and Jon Steinberg, who are also the showrunners on Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Miranda was the “perfect” Hermes for the show, and they were happy they were able to get him to sign on.
“I mean, he already loved the books,” Shotz said of Miranda. “His kids love the books. So, it was a very easy phone call. We were like, ‘Lin, come play with us,’ and he right away was so excited to be a part of this and play such an iconic role from the series.”
Another major actor who joined the series early on was Reddick, who died in March, shortly after production on the show was completed.
Scobell, Simhadri and Jeffries, who plays Annabeth, all had a similar take on the John Wick actor, sharing that he was humble and kind, while his presence also commanded respect.
Steinberg added, “Lance was a person I’m really glad we got to work with and an actor I’m very glad we were able to have become a part of this family and this show. There are going to be a lot of kids who get to meet Zeus in the right way through an actor with just an incredible amount of presence and an incredible human being. It was a really difficult situation and a horrible loss.”
For the showrunner and his fellow executive producers, the most important part of creating the series was finding the right three kids to play Percy, Grover and Annabeth. The actors who were chosen needed to be able to convey a wide range of emotions.
“We were going to ask them to do action that was really hard and labor-intensive,” Steinberg explained. “We were going to ask them to do emotional scenes that were complicated. We were going to ask them to be funny. And we were going to ask them to become friends with each other in a way that really felt believable.”
And Scobell, Simhadri and Jeffries did just that. They became fast friends even before production began, Jeffries shared.
“They’re super amazing, super nice and they’re very kind. They’re very inclusive,” she said of Scobell and Simhadri. “They’re fun to work with and even though it was super quick, just to meet each other with chemistry read, we made friends with each other super quickly.”
Percy Jackson author Rick Riordan, who has been vocal about not being involved in the films based on his books, had the opposite experience on the Disney+ series. He was there for every step of production, from being in and out of the writers room constantly to being on set and involved in the casting process.
For Riordan and his wife, Becky, who served as an executive producer on the series, every part of the process was important, but there was one thing they felt was was the most significant.
“I guess I would say getting the spirit of the books right,” Riordan told THR. “It’s a magical story. It’s a coming-of-age story. It has to have humor and heart and action. And that was a mix that we had to work at, but I think we got it.”
The first two episodes of Percy Jackson and the Olympians premiere on Disney+ on Dec. 20.
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