At 17, Aryan Simhadri has the kind of résumé most child actors could only dream of: He has acted in national commercials, guest-starred on major shows (Will & Grace), played the lead in a Disney Channel original movie (Spin), acted on Broadway (Trevor: The Musical), and lent his voice to the fantastical world of children’s animation. But nothing has compared to his starring role in the Disney+ adaptation of Percy Jackson & the Olympians, the second book series he ever read as a child.
Adapted from Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief, the first season of the fantasy series follows Percy Jackson (Walker Scobell), who discovers that he is the scion of a mortal woman (Virgina Kull) and the god Poseidon (Toby Stephens). After finding shelter at Camp Half-Blood, a secret training facility for demigods, Percy sets out on a quest with his newfound best friends, Annabeth Chase (Leah Sava Jeffries) and Grover Underwood (Simhadri), to save his mother from Hades in the underworld and to find Zeus’ master lightning bolt before a war breaks out on Olympus. While Percy and Annabeth are children of gods (Annabeth is the daughter of Athena), Grover is a satyr — a creature that is half-man and half-goat — tasked with protecting others.
Simhadri never expected to join the Percy Jackson franchise. He first heard about the open casting call two years ago and, believing that he would not be the right fit, submitted a self-tape audition for Grover on a lark. Although the executive producers had already completed their first round of chemistry reads, they were still searching for an actor who could embody the qualities that most people would want in a best friend — empathetic, sweet, affable, loyal, and a little bit goofy — until they saw Simhadri’s tape. “Rick saw him and just said, ‘Okay, that’s it. We’re not looking anymore,’” recalls Riordan’s wife, Becky.
Simhadri, however, did not seem to register that he was in serious contention until he got deeper in the audition process. After undergoing three or four rounds of callbacks, he received the news that would change his life. “I got the call when I was hanging out with my friend, and me and my mom just started freaking out,” Simhadri tells Teen Vogue on a recent video call from his home in Irvine, California. “I felt bad [because] I left [my friend] alone for 45 minutes. She had no idea what was going on. I was like, ‘So… something really cool happened, and you’re just going to have to take my word for it!’”
It is easy to forget that, despite being the oldest of the Percy Jackson trio, Simhadri is still an everyday teenager dealing with the growing pains of adolescence. Aside from learning that there would be opportunities to flesh out side characters such as Medusa and Procrustes in the series, Simhadri says he “barely” remembers anything from his initial meeting with Riordan — who gifted him a new book for his birthday — mostly because Simhadri “was freaking out the entire time.” He now attends an online school, which allows him greater flexibility with his unpredictable work schedule, and decided to take some more rigorous classes during the actors’ and writers’ strikes in Hollywood. “I’m applying to colleges, and I need those credits, man! So I’ve gotten some downtime to work on my calculus,” he says, lamenting that he will probably never use differential equations in his adult life.
Since the new Percy Jackson cast was announced last year, some self-proclaimed purists have taken issue with the fact that Scobell, Jeffries, and Simhadri did not match the exact physical descriptions of their respective characters in the source material. Riordan has repeatedly defended his casting decisions, arguing that it was more important for him that the actors match their characters’ personalities.
“They have so enriched the way that I imagine my own characters now that it would be impossible for me to separate them,” the author says. The Riordans have even begun reading Rick’s writing in the voices of the actors who play them. “With these kids, our goal is to support and nurture them and make sure they feel safe and protected. We had to form a village around our young actors and make sure they were getting what they needed to do well and to feel good about what they were doing.”
Simhadri, who is Indian American, claims that he has fortunately received “nothing but love and support.” But as “a massive fan of the books” himself, Simhadri recognizes that any discourse surrounding the series stems from a deep-seated desire for a faithful adaptation — and this is just that, he says. “Seeing the Minotaur after looking at a guy in [visual effects] tights for six months is such a big leap. I guess seeing all of the responses, both the good and the bad, served as motivation for us because there’s so many people that we want to make proud because it’s a beloved book series, and our hope is that they’ll be proud of what we put out on-screen.”
Part of honoring the original source material meant Simhadri, along with his costars, had to dive head first into preparing for the roles. “There was this whole day where I was just in the makeup chair and they were gluing on different versions of the ears,” Simhadri explains of his character’s distinctive look. “Dan [Shotz], the showrunner, would come up and be like, ‘This one looks a little too elvish. This one does not look goat-like enough.’ And the same thing for the horns: ‘These ones are way too big. There needs to be development through the series.’ Eventually, we landed on a perfect set of ears that were molded to my own. Every day, [I spent] 45 minutes in the makeup chair, just getting those glued on. I’d go to sleep with them, shower with them.”
The cast had two months before the start of filming to get acquainted, with the help of their acting coach, Andrew McIlroy. While Scobell worked on sword fighting and Jeffries focused on stunt training, Simhadri says he spent hours upon hours learning how to walk like a goat from a man who had helped people act like velociraptors on Jurassic Park.
“Eventually, it got to the point where even when we went out, just as friends, Walker and Leah would be like, ‘Hey dude, you need to walk normally. You’re not on set,’” he recalls with a laugh. “Walking normally after 10 months of walking on the ball of my foot felt unnatural; I had to consciously put my heel down to the ground. But I think [being] always on the ball of your foot is very fitting for Grover. He’s a skittish person, so having that physicality definitely helped the performance.”
Simhadri has yet to hear from Brandon T. Jackson, who famously played Grover in two feature films over a decade ago, but he actually has a direct line of communication to Logan Lerman, who played Percy, if he chooses to use it. Lerman “follows me back [on Instagram]! Bullet Train is one of my favorite movies, and every time I watch him, I’m like, ‘Today’s going to be the day I reach out, like, ‘Hey, I love your movie.’ But I’ll get there one day,” says Simhadri, who drew inspiration from Lerman and Jackson’s portrayal of Percy and Grover’s close-knit relationship.
In the series, however, Simhadri wanted to make sure that Grover’s connection with Annabeth was as evident as the one he shares with Percy. “Grover helps Percy get accustomed to [life as a demigod] and get over what happens to his mom early on, but he’s also very close to Annabeth,” he says. “He, Luke, Thalia, and Annabeth are like this family. They bonded together trying to make it back to camp, so he, Luke, and Annabeth are all very close, and you don’t see the initial bonding that happened.”
“Grover is 24 but appears as 12, because satyrs age differently,” Riordan explains. “He has served as protector for both Annabeth and Percy, so there’s a little tension there: ‘Well, are you my protector, or are you that guy’s protector? Whose side are you on?’ He tries to be the peacemaker [between Percy and Annabeth], but that doesn’t always work. He’s the heart of the trio. His superpower is empathy.”
Thankfully, the drama on the set of Percy Jackson was contained to the story being told. In separate interviews, Simhadri, Scobell, and Jeffries all agree that their own friendship dynamics mirror those of their characters later in the series. “Me and Walker are always goofing off and Leah has to bring us back down,” Simhadri says with a half-mischievous smile.
There was one day, however, when the three musketeers caught a massive case of the giggles. “We were on a train — for fans of the books, it’s the Chimera sequence [on the Amtrak] — and I guess it was just being in such an enclosed space, but we were so delirious the entire time,” Simhadri says. “We found the smallest things funny. At one point, we were just making random noises and laughing our asses off about it. The act of the stunt brings us back into [focusing] on the day. But when we’re not rolling, it’s a different story.”
Much like Scobell, Simhadri was most excited to shoot the scenes where Percy and Grover come face-to-face with Ares, the god of war, later in the season, “mostly because of how awesome Adam Copeland is,” he says. (For the record, Simhadri thinks Grover would belong in Demeter’s cabin at camp.) “The only thing I can tease about it is that I had a one-on-one scene with him, and it was one of the most fun acting experiences I’ve ever had.”
That scene between Grover and Ares is “not in the books,” Becky Riordan teases. “It’s a lovely exchange between the two of them that deepens the whole story and the relationships. It’s what gods think and what satyrs think.”
Through watching a show about a hero discovering that what makes him different is his greatest strength, Simhadri hopes audiences will ultimately find a sense of community like Percy does at Camp Half-Blood. “No matter how niche your interests are, no matter how different you feel you are, there’s always a place for you,” Simhadri says. “You’re always going to be incredible at something, and that’s the arc that Percy goes on. He is good at literally nothing until he finds out that there is a place for him. There is a place where he can get good at something that he actually enjoys, where he can make friends, where he can call home.”
