How Walker Scobell Became Percy Jackson 🔱

It's a lot of hard work.

I know, it all sounds super fun and it is super fun,

but you kind of have to fall in love with the process.

You can't just love the glamorous parts.

Hi, I am Walker Scobell

and this is how I became Percy Jackson

in Percy Jackson and the Olympians.

[TV static]

[cinematic music]

I first started reading Percy Jackson

when I was in third grade.

I read it seven times since then.

The first five books, I was obsessed with it,

because I was born in Virginia Beach Hospital.

There's a giant Poseidon statue like near the beach

and I used to print out a picture

and I'd bring it to school to show people

and tell them like this is proof that I'm Percy Jackson.

I was filming The Adam Project

and I got an audition for Percy Jackson.

My sister, she played Nancy Bobofit

and my little brother played the teacher

Mrs. Dodds.

And to get into character,

he put like my mom's high heels on

and he talked in a really high pitched voice

and so you can like see me kind of cracking up

in my audition, it took like maybe like 30

or 40 takes and I have no idea how I got it,

but I don't think it really like set in until I got there,

until I was filming it, until like I was on camera

and people were calling me Percy.

[cinematic music]

I did watch the Percy Jackson movies when I was a kid.

I loved them.

I still do.

I definitely think that my Percy Jackson is closer

to the books than the movies were.

I think a big part of that is Percy's age.

He's 12 years old.

I think it's very easy to forget,

but I think it was very interesting to kind of

explore the fact that there's still children.

Mr. Jackson, you will learn to control yourself.

Do you understand me?

Me? Do you understand me?

He can't help it Mrs Dodds, Percy's special.

Meeting Rick.

I met him in my final kind

of audition when they told me I got the part,

I didn't know he was gonna show up.

I wore my Camp Half Blood T-shirt that I got in third grade.

I was freaking out.

And so the second time I met him I was a lot more calm

and collected so I could actually talk to him.

He's given me a lot of tips and tricks for playing Percy.

The biggest thing was just to relax.

He told me that he loved how we were playing the characters

and that we were doing great so far,

which kind of like set me in.

And this was at the beginning, so it kind of

made me relax a bit more and made me kind of lock in.

[cinematic music]

We did a full month of just training and rehearsing scenes.

I did a lot of underwater training

and like sword fight training with the stunts team.

We practice wires a lot.

I did this scene where I'm falling, it's like an

overhead shot of me falling down

the Chimera sequence when I fall off the arch in St. Louis.

So I was on wires and I was falling down.

So we practiced that a couple times.

We did a bunch of wire work and sword fighting stuff.

[cinematic music]

Normal day on set, I wake up at like 7:30.

Me and my dad or mom.

We drive over to set and I get there around 8:30.

I would get into my wardrobe, my clothes

and my sides would be in my trailer.

So I'd go over my sides, see what I'm doing that day.

And then I'd go into, I think hair first.

I'd get my hair done, if it was a day

where I was gonna be wet all day,

they would put this like slime in my hair

to make it appear wet for the whole day,

which felt really weird,

especially when they like wash it out.

And normally they just make me put like three times more tan

because I reflect light on the volume stage.

And sometimes like there's a scene where I'm,

I'm like deathly pale

and I have like these like red kind of,

it's red all over my eyes and look like I'm about to die.

And what I find so funny about watching that scene is that

that day they decided not

to put any makeup on me other than the redness.

So like the deathly pale, you see that's just my normal

like complexion.

And then I go out to film, we go rehearse

maybe like nine o'clock, 9:30,

and then I go to school for like 30 minutes

until they set up the shot and we'd just go back

and forth, shooting, school, shooting, school.

And then at the end of the day I head to my trailer,

like wash all my makeup off,

take my clothes off, put new clothes on.

I don't just take 'em off.

Yeah, and then I head home and go to bed

or play video games.

The first day on set we were shooting at the

Met on the volume stage.

I keep saying I film all these weird places,

but the whole time I was on the volume stage, just the scene

where it was me and Arian are talking, we do this bit

where we both have sandwiches

and I would take his meat off his sandwich

and he would take my cheese and

that took like a week of training.

That was the first scene.

I was definitely a bit nervous going back and watching it.

It's super hard to watch that scene specifically.

I think like as the show goes on, like each episode

it kind of gets easier to watch because

it's like closer to now.

But that first scene, it's like impossible for me

and Arian to watch because

that was our first day like ever filming together.

I think the hardest stunt sequence was the Minotaur fight.

Not only because it was just like

I was fighting like a bull that doesn't exist.

I think one of the most difficult parts was

that it was like pouring rain

and it was dark so I couldn't really see what was going on.

And a lot of like my notes for camera were

to open my eyes more,

which is really hard when it's like

when there's rain coming in your eyes.

There was a couple different ways we shot

the Minotaur sequence.

One was there's this like really,

really tall like seven foot guy

and he was in the full skin tight gray MoCap suit

holding a Minotaur head.

So it was a lot less

intimidating than you think it would be.

So there was that when I was fighting him

with like the sword and then when I crawl into his back,

they shot that in a very interesting way.

So they made a mockup of the Minotaur like without arms

and from like the waist up.

So I was on a wire and I'd sprint

and they had like a little bit of fur

so I could grab onto it.

I'd sprint around him and then I'd jump grab onto the back

and then I'd get on his head

and they did a full like sequence

of me ripping the horn off and stabbing him in the head.

That took like maybe three days to shoot,

it was a long sequence.

I was wearing a wool sweater while we were filming the

Minotaur sequence, kind of like this.

But it was like real like sheep wool.

And so when it would rain, there was a very, very

terrible stench coming from my sweater

and it kept getting like loose because I was running around.

It was pouring rain, it got heavy

and they would like constantly change

that out and then dry it.

And we had two sweaters, I think they just rotate 'em.

And so that took a while.

Sometimes we had to pause the scene

so we could let the sweater dry out.

And also like camp Half-Blood fight.

I think that scene might've been like the hardest

technically to film because we're like running in sand.

There's three of 'em, there's Dior

and then two of her cabin siblings.

And so for every one move they did, I had to do three.

And so I was running backwards on like this rocky sand

doing this amazing sword fight.

While we were filming that,

I did not expect Dior to scream that loud.

[actress screaming]

And if you look at my face, I'm not acting.

I was genuinely terrified she was going to hit me.

I love Dior.

She's the sweetest person ever,

but she's terrifying, which I think is perfect for Clarice.

People listen closer when you talk,

they work harder to be your friend.

I've never had like an actual friend group

that I've been super connected to

until I found acting

and I started Percy Jackson and now I have like Leah

and Charlie and Dior

and Arian, of course, all these people

that I feel like know how I'm feeling.

[cinematic music]

One of my favorite parts about Percy is that,

and something that I hope fans take away from it is

that there's a place for everyone.

There's always somebody that knows what you're going through

with Percy specifically.

Like how many things happen to him

and how stressful his life is.

He's never lost like confidence or hope.

He's never lost a sense of humor,

which I think is a really important lesson in real life.