Trivia / Percy Jackson and the Olympians (2023)

• Ability over Appearance:
  • Rick Riordan is a fervent believer that an able actor is more important than one that looks the part, which is the main reason why very few of the characters resemble their book counterparts. For more information, see his blog post What a Week!
  • Leah Sava Jeffries, who plays Annabeth Chase, commented that she reasons that an actor is supposed to play the character and not the appearance in this interview with Geeks of Color. The question that prompted this reply was how she felt about the discrepancies between her own appearance and those of Annabeth as described in the books.
  • The Zeus of this series bears little resemblance to the bearded and long-haired Zeus from the books, but his booming, authoritative presence courtesy of the late Lance Reddick makes this nary an issue for most viewers.
• Approval of God:
  • Logan Lerman and Alexandra Daddario, who played Percy and Annabeth in the films, are excited to see the series. Lerman in particular has supported Walker Scobell as his successor.
  • Chris McCarrell, who originated Percy in The Lightning Thief musical for the Off-Broadway and Broadway runs, wrote a touching Twitter post passing the torch to Walker Scobell soon after the latter was announced as Percy. Kristin Stokes, who originated Annabeth across multiple productions (and dyed her hair blonde for it), also showed support for Leah Sava Jeffries on Twitter, saying, "Athena and I got your back Leah — #smartgirls stick together".
• California Doubling: The series, set across the USA, was primarily filmed in and around Vancouver, Canada, just like the first film adaptations, with most of the filming taking place on a Volume soundstage. Percy (Walker Scobell) himself pokes fun at this in Episode 3 in a pine forest where they encounter Medusa.
  Walker (Percy): I didn't even know they had forests in New Jersey, but we found one.
• Cast the Expert: An accidental version. Glynn Turman was scouted as Chiron before the producers found out that he was an avid horseman who even runs his own summer camp that teaches children and teens to ride. As such, a role where he's required to be on horseback most of the time was a perfect fit, and he chose the horse that plays the other half of Chiron himself.
• Cast the Runner-Up:
  • Olivea Morton auditioned for the role of Annabeth before getting cast as Nancy Bobofit.
  • Aryan Simhadri has confirmed in an interview that he auditioned for both Percy and Grover. He ended up cast as Grover.
• Dawson Casting: 16-year-old Aryan Simhadri as Grover, who is chronologically 24 but is the satyr equivalent of a 12-year-old human because satyrs mature half as fast as humans.
• Disabled Character, Disabled Actor: As in Greek myth, Hephaestus is a crippled god and uses a cane to walk around. Timothy Omundson suffered a stroke in 2017 that impacted his walking ability.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • Walker Scobell (Percy) has mentioned in several interviews that he was genuinely scared when Dior Goodjohn (Clarisse) shouted her Big "NO!" after he broke her spear and went at him during the Capture the Flag fight scene.
  • Aryan Simhadri (Grover) said in an interview that his jump of shock when Adam Copeland (Ares) bangs the diner table in episode 5 was very real because he didn't expect Copeland to do that. The director loved it so much that it was kept in.
• In Memoriam: The final episode of Season 1 is dedicated to Lance Reddick, who played Zeus.
• Meaningful Release Date: The second teaser released on August 18, 2023, which is Percy's birthday in the books.
• Method Acting: Adam Copeland (Ares) bought a Harley-Davidson to practice riding and get into character.
• No Stunt Double: Walker Scobell did several of his own stunts, and a fair bit of fighting. He learned how to free-dive in costume for the underwater scenes, and was assisted by a crew of scuba divers for several of the shots, such as the ending of Episode 4.
• Playing Against Type: Lin-Manuel Miranda, who's best known for his musical and comedic chops, plays Hermes as a cynical, troubled god who angsts over his failure to be a good father to Luke, and only reluctantly helps the heroes when it becomes apparent they won't take no for an answer.
• Posthumous Credit: Lance Reddick passed away on March 17, 2023, after filming his scenes as Zeus for Season 1. The eighth episode serves as his final performance, dedicated in his memory.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Several of the cast members are fans of the books. Walker Scobell in particular has read all the books up to The Trials of Apollo, owns a Camp Half-Blood T-shirt, and brought a NY Yankees cap for chemistry reads for the actors for Annabeth and Grover.
  • Joe Tracz, the writer on two of the Season 1 episodes, had previously co-created The Lightning Thief musical adaptation because he "loved the books and was disappointed by the movies".
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: Toby Stephens and Walker Scobell look very believable as father and son, due to their similar hairstyle and facial shape.
• Self-Adaptation: Rick Riordan, the author of the books, serves as executive producer and as a writer.
• So My Kids Can Watch: In the Making Of documentary, Virginia Kull (Sally Jackson) recounted that she realized how important Percy Jackson was to people after her son had an emotional reaction to her submitting an audition tape for the show.
• Throw It In!:
  • The owls that appear in the second episode just happened to be in the trees during filming at Camp Half-Blood. Riordan jokes that the goddess Athena, who has owls as her sacred animal, was giving them her blessing that day.
  • Annabeth adjusting the straps on Percy's armor was not in the script. Leah Sava Jeffries improvised this moment, which was kept due to the director liking the Ship Tease.
• What Could Have Been: Argus was originally scripted to appear in Episode 2, but per Riordan's news page, he was cut due to budget reasons (namely the cost of the CGI needed to depict the hundreds of eyes all over his body) and because the episode was "already so crowded with so many characters and scenes that we decided having Argus there also would be too much".

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