Walker Scobell has had quite the adventure since his debut role in 2022’s time travel film “The Adam Project.” Starring alongside a Hollywood juggernaut like Ryan Reynolds is a Herculean task for a young actor, but Scobell took on an even bigger project just one year later: the titular role on Disney+’s “Percy Jackson and the Olympians.” Adapted from Rick Riordan’s hit book series of the same name, the story follows a middle-schooler who discovers he is the half-god son of Poseidon.
Nowadays, Scobell is busier than ever. While the first two seasons of “Percy Jackson” had a break between productions, allowing the actor and his castmates a rare, uninterrupted school year, filming on Season 3 started up almost immediately after Season 2 wrapped. This means Scobell and costars Leah Sava’ Jeffries (“Beast”) and Aryan Simhadri (“Freakier Friday”) are completing a global press tour during a brief break in shooting the third of five planned seasons. That’s a lot of work for anyone; but in our interview, Scobell occasionally stresses that, somehow, he’s not doing enough.
“Sometimes I wonder if I should be doing more things, more productions,” he says. Still, the 16-year-old believes his role as Percy is preparing him well for the industry at large, and he’s thankful that his career hasn’t come with any bad experiences yet.
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As the show gets deeper into Riordan’s narrative, stunts will become ever more important to the show, and Scobell couldn’t be more excited. “I try to do as much as I can, as much as possible,” he says. “Even if it’s a little thing where it’s like… I have to roll or trip on the ground. I like to do that.”
Scobell says he would jump at the opportunity to do basically anything physical that the creative team would allow. “There are things that we just can’t do if it’s just too dangerous,” he explains, but he finds plenty of comfort in the work of his stunt doubles, Adam Chase and Cassandra Ebner, and how they and the rest of the team help him portray Percy.
Now that the show is in its second season, viewers are beginning to see some of their favorite characters grow. (And not just in the literal sense, since Scobell, Jeffries, and Simhardri took on these roles at the beginning of their teens.) For Scobell, he’s hoping that people come to realize that Percy isn’t an idiot, just inexperienced.
“I think people always forget that Percy’s not stupid,” he says with a laugh. “This is just all completely new to him, and a lot of these other characters have been living this life forever. I think it’s easy to just call Percy the dumb guy, but it’s more that this is his first time experiencing any of this.”
The actor’s defensiveness of Percy comes from a place of adoration. Since taking on the role, he’s been vocal about how much he loves Riordan’s book series and the character he portrays onscreen. That love is one of his greatest assets as a young performer but, as most book fans can attest, it’s very easy to get frustrated by onscreen changes to canon. When asked if he ever has moments on set where his immediate reaction is “That’s not how that happened!” Scobell has a laugh and admits: “All the time.”
“It’s hard for me to let it go, because it’s been engraved in my head since I read it in third grade,” he continues. “I know that some things have to be cut; things change and I think there’s not a lot I can do as an actor…. I kind of just fully embrace whatever they’ve changed because joke’s on me if I don’t go all out and try to do my best every day.”
Scobell’s devotion to canon also extends to the enthusiasm around the pairing of Percy and Jeffries’ Annabeth (“Percabeth” to the ones who know). While fans are constantly begging to get more teases and tidbits, the actor is happy to have things play out in the same way they did in the books: slowly. “Here’s the thing: Percy never really thinks about it that much,” he says. “[Fans] love it, and it’s amazing that they love it, and I’m super excited when we actually get things that are Percabeth. But so far, it’s like, these are things that friends do.
“I get confused all the time when I see something where it’s like, ‘Oh my God, Percy did this.’ And I’m like, I didn’t even know I did that,’ ” he continues with a laugh. “It is a slow burn. People always push it. Sometimes, even the writers push it a little bit—you know, add in these certain lines. And I’m always like, ‘Guys, you see how that could be taken in this way.’ ”
To flip that on its head, we started chatting about aspects of the novels Scobell doesn’t want to wait for. He returns to the physicality of it all, admitting he’s excited to portray Percy’s leveled-up physical abilities.
“It’s more about the stunts aspect where I’m like, I want to fight like that,” he explains. “I want to be that strong, and I want to do these awesome, crazy things that he does in those books, because I love filming that kind of stuff.”
Thankfully, Scobell has plenty of time to grow alongside Percy as he continues on the journey of this series and beyond. For now, he’s enjoying the time on set, traveling around the world on the press tour, and spending his downtime in movie theaters. Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” are his favorites of the year, and he can’t wait for Josh Safdie’s “Marty Supreme.”
“I love Timothée Chalamet,” he says, lighting up. “I love his energy in a lot of interviews he does. I’m excited to see him completely go at something like that.”
“Percy Jackson and the Olympians” is currently airing its second season on Disney+, with new episodes dropping every Wednesday.