Leah Sava Jeffries had a feeling that her casting as Annabeth Chase in the new Disney+ series adaptation of Percy Jackson & the Olympians was going to elicit some racist backlash. Even in a fantasy world where modern demigods cross paths with classic monsters of Greek mythology, some longtime Percy Jackson fans took issue with the fact that the goddess Athena’s strong-willed daughter, described as a young white woman in Rick Riordan’s novels, would be played by a young Black woman.
“When we got the part, Mr. Rick told us, ‘No matter how many times you might hear or listen to what people say about what they have in the books, I want you guys to be yourself,’” Jeffries tells Teen Vogue on a recent video call from her home in Los Angeles. “Mr. Rick chose us for a reason. We got the part because we fit their personality, not because we fit their appearance. If he wanted us to be exactly like the books, then he would’ve picked a girl with blonde hair, gray eyes, and a certain height. My appearance is different, but that backlash motivated me to keep going, and I definitely want to give this [message] to other girls to always stand on what they know about themselves. People will try to break you down, but we were made strong.”
That inner strength, paired with a wisdom beyond her years, made the 14-year-old the ideal candidate to play the female lead of the Percy Jackson franchise. When he set out to develop the definite screen adaptation of his life’s work during the COVID-19 pandemic, Riordan, his wife Becky Riordan, and their fellow executive producers insisted on instituting an open casting call for young actors of all backgrounds. After all, Riordan reiterates, the character of Percy Jackson was initially conceived to show his and Becky’s neurodivergent son “that whatever sets you apart from the norm is a strength, not a weakness. In many cases, it can be an indication of your greatness and your potential to be a hero.”
Riordan’s philosophy on the Percy Jackson set was not unlike his primary objective as a former middle-school teacher in Texas: “I wanted to make sure every kid who came into my classroom felt safe, honored, valued, and heard. I get very angry if people attack my students. Don’t mess with Rick’s kids,” he says. Case in point: The author was among the first to decry the adverse reaction to Jeffries’ casting, writing in a lengthy blog post that anyone who has “a problem with this casting” should “take it up with me.” More than 18 months later, Rick maintains that Jeffries “was head and shoulders above everyone else we looked at,” while Becky says Annabeth, for her, was the easiest role to cast.
“The old saying is, ‘Mirrors and windows, we need them both,’” Rick says. “You need to have windows into other people’s lives to learn empathy; you need to have mirrors that allow you to see your own experience accurately and authentically represented in the art that you get to see. That’s a very powerful form of giving kids agency, letting them feel like anything’s possible.”
Becky adds, “Rick and I are appalled when people come to us and say, ‘Did Disney make you do it?’ It just makes us so angry.”
Another person who came to Jeffries’ defense was Alexandra Daddario, who played Annabeth in two feature films over a decade ago. “I didn’t even know that she had said that until I was just scrolling online, and it said something like, ‘Alexandra Daddario was standing up for Leah Jeffries,’ and I’m like, ‘What are you guys talking about?!’” Jeffries recalls, referencing the Tweet that Daddario sent in May 2022. “I felt so honored to see that somebody who used to play this part is a supporter of me playing this part. She was saying the things that I really wanted to hear; it was definitely something that I found very peaceful to hear.” (There has yet to be a meeting of the Annabeths, but Jeffries is hopeful that she and Daddario will be able to meet and chat in the future.)
Despite the source material, Jeffries says she did not feel any pressure to emulate “somebody that used to be this [other] person.” After receiving the Percy Jackson audition in late 2021, Jeffries, who had read the novels but was not as big of a fan as her older brother, pored over the first three books and began reimagining her take on Annabeth: What are her likes and dislikes? What does she look like? How does she talk? What does her voice sound like?
“The motivation that I had for this was crazy,” Jeffries says, grinning. Inevitably, parts of herself began to come out in her auditions. “When I auditioned, something just clicked: ‘This was for me.’ There’s certain auditions when you’re like, ‘I feel like there’s something about this that I know I can connect with.’ This is definitely where I wanted to be, where I wanted to stay and be for a while.” And even when her callbacks were followed by long periods of radio silence, Jeffries believed there was still a place for her in Percy Jackson. She was right.
Adapted from The Lightning Thief, the freshman season of the series follows the 12-year-old titular protagonist (Walker Scobell) — having just discovered that he is the scion of a mortal woman (Virginia Kull) and the god Poseidon (Toby Stephens) — who sets out on a quest with his newfound best friends, Annabeth (Jeffries) and Grover Underwood (Aryan Simhadri), to save his mother from the underworld and to find Zeus’ master lightning bolt before a war breaks out on Olympus.
After having spent the last five years at Camp Half-Blood, Annabeth is particularly eager to prove her mettle — and her worth — in the human world. Jeffries reveals that there were a number of details that helped her get into character: Her playlist included Mary J. Blige and Lil’ Kim’s “I Can Love You”; her flowing, braided hair made her feel powerful like Annabeth; and she would often refer back to Annabeth’s famous New York Yankees cap, a gift from Athena that gives her daughter the power of invisibility. (She dons the hat in the second episode.)
“Annabeth is the obvious veteran in the group,” Rick Riordan says. “She is the one that knows the most, has the plans, has always been in charge. She is bringing a kind of leadership quality to the trio that is critical but also chafes a little on the boys. She can come across to them as ‘Well, who made you the leader?’ She and Percy grow to respect one another and become good friends, which is tough for a boy and a girl who are 12. There’s going to be a lot of friction and awkwardness there.”
Jeffries is well-aware that longtime Percy Jackson fans have been clamoring for the development of Percy and Annabeth’s relationship, which has remained a cornerstone of Riordan’s novels. They meet for the first time in the second episode at Camp Half-Blood, a demigod training ground, where Annabeth recognizes that Percy is her ticket to the quest on which she has always wanted to embark.
“When Annabeth sees Percy, there’s a certain difference in her body, in her mind, in her eyes, and how she says things. Percy’s thinking, Why does she keep watching over me? Does she ever talk? Why is she just so stubborn? This girl must be crazy. Annabeth knew that Percy was going to be the one, even though Percy does not see that,” Jeffries explains. While she trains him to survive in the mythological world, Percy helps Annabeth reconnect with her humanity. “She’s very straightforward, and Percy’s more on the goofy side and not taking it seriously, but that’s what really builds [their relationship].”
Jeffries was most excited to shoot the “Tunnel of Love” sequence between Percy and Annabeth at Waterland, a key moment from The Lightning Thief. “I put a lot of emotion into it, and me and Walker really studied for this part to be done really good for you guys, and our acting coach [Andrew McIlroy] taught us really good,” Jeffries says. “I’m really excited because this really builds the relationship between Annabeth and Percy, because it’s been very distant [up to that point]. You could tell she cared about him, even if she didn’t show it.”
Ask anyone from the cast and crew of Percy Jackson, and they will tell you that Jeffries, Scobell, and Simhadri’s friendships are not dissimilar from those of their characters. Scobell and Simhadri spent the first month of filming together at the fictional Yancy Academy, while Jeffries, who did not have any scenes to film, chose to focus on her studies. By the time she got on set, Jeffries could tell that her costars had forged a genuine connection, but she slowly settled into a comfortable rhythm with them after a few weeks.
Despite being the youngest of the trio, Jeffries is the self-described “mother of the group.” How so? Jeffries shoots me a “You don’t know the half of it” look through her computer screen and rattles off an example: “Walker and Aryan could be playing on set. They’d be like, ‘No, you stop!’ [giggles] ‘No, you stop!’ And I’d just sit there watching them play, like, ‘Guys, you know the acting coach has been calling you guys for five minutes, right? And you think that this is what we should be doing?’”
Even during their schooling hours in separate rooms, Scobell and Simhadri would find a way to yell at each other. From one room, “Walker would be like, ‘Hey, Aryan! Yo, we should do something later.’ And then Aryan would be like, ‘Yeah, bro, that’s so sick.’ And then I’m yelling through the room, like, ‘Can you guys please quiet down?! I’m trying to do my work.’ And then they’d be like, ‘Sorry, Leah.’ It was just the funniest thing,” Jeffries says, speaking with the kind of fond annoyance that a little sister has for her older brothers. “With Annabeth, she’s like [to Percy and Grover], ‘Can you guys quiet down? I’m trying to figure something out.’ It was definitely like how it is in the show.”
It’s Becky Riordan who probably puts it best: “Leah just thinks of herself as Annabeth now.”
