Rick Riordan on Adapting ‘Percy Jackson’ for TV: “We Dove in With Both Feet”
Author Rick Riordan has enthralled two generations of readers with his Percy Jackson and the Olympians novels — beginning in 2005, and now with 180 million copies in print — and other books based on Greek, Norse and Egyptian mythology.
He’s also shepherding a long-awaited Percy Jackson TV series for Disney+ — now in postproduction, with a premiere date to be announced — a decade after feature films based on the first two books were poorly received by fans (and the author himself). Riordan also has a publishing imprint to spotlight authors and mythology from historically underrepresented cultures and is revisiting his most famous character in a sixth Percy Jackson book, Chalice of the Gods, set for release in September.
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Was there a particular element from the books that you really wanted to make sure was part of the series?
One thing that we all agreed on was that we should do everything we could to preserve what makes Percy Jackson, Percy Jackson. That’s a combination of modern-day setting, classical mythology, action, and humor. One of the ways that that manifested is making sure that we found actors who were an age that was appropriate for the way Percy is at the beginning of the books, so that viewers could watch Percy [Walker Scobell] and Annabeth [Leah Sava Jeffries] and Grover [Aryan Simhadri] grow up on the screen, the way that you read about them growing up from age 12 to 16 in the five books. I’m certainly gratified that we did it that way, because the young actors that we found are fantastic.
How did the chance to adapt these books for TV come back around to you? I know you weren’t really involved with the films and not a fan of the way they were adapted.
For a long time, I had kind of just assumed that was it for me and the TV and film industry — that we gave it a shot and it didn’t work out. Once rights are sold, that’s pretty much it. What changed is the acquisition of Fox [which produced the two movies] by Disney. Disney has always been the publisher for Percy Jackson. Talking to my wife [Becky], I think we both said, you know, there might be an opportunity here. We were hesitant about doing that — I hadn’t had the best experience before. It’s not an industry that I know, or that I’ve ever honestly wanted to be a part of. It’s not something that I ever dreamed about [laughs], becoming a producer. I’m perfectly happy writing books. But I knew that the fans of the books really, really wanted a good adaptation, another try. So it was really for them. We dove in with both feet, and for the last three years, that’s been a major part of what we’ve been up to.
How did the Rick Riordan Presents publishing imprint come about?
For years, young readers would ask me if I would be interested in doing other mythologies. They wanted to see a Percy Jackson sort of take on, you know, Chinese mythology or Aztec mythology, or the different Western African mythologies, whatever it might be. And as much as I love all the world mythologies, I just felt a little uncomfortable with that idea. Because I didn’t really grow up with those mythologies, the way I grew up with Greek and Roman and Norse [myths], or even Egyptian — I mean, I knew those from the time I was a small child. But [something like] Hindu mythology, I love it, but I’m not an expert. So I talked to my editor, and I had this idea that it would probably be more authentic and more interesting, and just a more positive thing for the publishing industry in general, if, rather than me trying to write all these books, I could turn to the publishing side and start an imprint, where I would simply support other writers doing their own takes on their mythology and the cultures that they grew up with.
What do you think the publishing world gains from this kind of project?
I think there are a lot of things that publishing benefits from, and I’m not going to take total credit for this. It’s an industry-wide movement — we’re just trying to provide a proof of concept that Rick Riordan Presents is a way of saying, “Look, these stories are great, there’s a market for it, the authors are out there, they need the support.” What you get is a broader base of authorship, and also a broader readership. It is such a powerful thing for a young person to go to the library and pick up a book, and see on the cover of this adventure a kid that looks like them and is talking about stories that come from their heritage and their culture. Not only that, but to see that the author who wrote that book looks like them, and came from a similar background, it opens up the idea that stories aren’t just for one group, they’re there for everybody.
You forcefully stood up for Leah Sava Jeffries when there was a backlash to her casting in the series. Why was that important for you to do?
For Leah, she should not have to deal with that. She should be allowed to practice her profession and her art, and to be recognized as a talented actor who got a part because she merited getting the part, without dealing with this speculation of it was only this or it was only that — “It was a quota, It was wokeness,” whatever, blah, blah, blah. That didn’t sit well with me. I am first and foremost always a teacher, and that was a teachable moment. That was a moment that I needed to say, “OK, hold on. Let’s examine this, and let’s examine what you’re saying and why you’re saying it.” Racism, I believe, is not something we have or don’t have. That’s the wrong conversation. I think we’re all prone to that. I mean, to believe anything else is to ignore the entirety of human civilization. Racism, colorism, it’s always been with us. So it’s not helpful for us to say, “Oh, I’m not racist.” Of course we are. What the question really is, is do we recognize it? And do we work on it? Or do we deny it? Those are the choices. That’s the conversation I was trying to frame —this is clearly not a valid thing to attack a young girl who worked very hard, and was cast out of hundreds of other young actresses that we looked at, because she was so good at embodying the soul, the personality of that character. She shouldn’t have to deal with that. And I want her to know that I stand behind her 100 percent. The entire team of the Percy Jackson series stands behind her unconditionally.
What was it like writing Percy again for Chalice of the Gods?
I was a little anxious about going back to Percy’s voice, because it has been quite a while since I’ve written a novel from Percy’s point of view. But it was sort of like putting on a comfortable pair of jeans. It was very, very familiar to me. It’s never easy writing a book, but it was much easier than I thought it was going to be. I enjoyed it, especially because I had been adapting The Lightning Thief, as you know, for the television series, and I had been getting back into the roots of Percy Jackson and kind of breaking it apart and looking at the components and kind of reminding myself how I wrote this story to begin with. The timing was really good.
I asked my kids, who are all readers of your work, for some questions as well. My 8-year-old son asks, what made you want to create The Kane Chronicles?
The Kane Chronicles was interesting to me because I’ve always loved Egyptian mythology, but there isn’t as much of it extant that as there is, say, with Greek mythology. We have fragments. We have little pieces of stories from the Egyptian mythos, but it’s not as well known. And I certainly didn’t know as much about it as I wanted to when I began researching. It was my chance to do something a little bit different outside of the Greek and Roman world. It was fun and an opportunity for me to learn a little a little bit more about a mythology that I’ve always admired.
His twin sister wants to know if you’ll write books based on Chinese or Irish mythology?
Chinese, probably not. That would be something that I would leave for the authors of Rick Riordan Presents, and we have several of them coming out. In terms of Irish, yes — I recently finished a master’s degree with University College Cork in Ireland, in Gaelic literature. One of the reasons for that was I was prepping to explore my own ancestral background and the language in the myths. I’ve been doing a lot of background research on that. The first thing I published on that was my own take on Finn McCool, the great Irish hero. I wrote his his origin story, basically, in an anthology, The Cursed Carnival, that came out last year. But yes, there are a lot of ideas percolating in the background.
And my oldest, who’s 11, is curious what inspired Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard?
I love Norse mythology. It’s so fun. We were moving to Boston at the time I started writing that series, so I decided to set it here in Boston. And I just got this idea in my head that if you were a hero who happened to die with a sword in your hand in battle, in modern times, would that mean that the Valkyries were still out there, and they would pick up your soul and take you to Valhalla? And what would Valhalla look like? I started running with that idea, and I decided to make Valhalla a hotel and have it here in Boston.
Interview edited for length and clarity.
A version of this story first appeared in the June 7 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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