"It's a lot of hard work. You have to fall in love with the process." When Walker Scobell received the news he got the role of Percy Jackson, he admits he totally freaked out. From reading the books seven times since he was in the third grade to the surreal moment he felt when they called him 'Percy' on set, Walker truly manifested his divine dreams. Walker breaks down his entire process for the 'Percy Jackson and the Olympians' live-action series, from studying the original movies to doing underwater training and so much more.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 It's a lot of hard work. I know it all sounds super fun and it is super fun, but you kind
00:07 of have to fall in love with the process. You can't just love the glamorous parts.
00:12 Hi, I'm Walker Scobell and this is how I became Percy Jackson and Percy Jackson and the Olympians.
00:26 I first started reading Percy Jackson when I was in third grade. I read it seven times
00:31 since then, the first five books. I was obsessed with it because I was born in Virginia Beach
00:35 Hospital. There was a giant Poseidon statue like near the beach and I used to print out
00:40 a picture and I'd bring it to school to show people and tell them like this is proof that
00:45 I'm Percy Jackson. I was filming the Atom Project and I got an audition for Percy Jackson.
00:52 My sister, she played Nancy Wilberfin. My little brother played the teacher, Mrs. Dodds.
00:59 And to get into character, he put like my mom's high heels on and he talks in a really
01:04 high pitched voice. And so you can like see me kind of cracking up in my audition. It
01:09 took like maybe like 30 or 40 takes. I have no idea how I got it, but I don't think it
01:14 really like set in until I got there, until I was filming it, until like I was on camera
01:19 and people were calling me Percy. I did watch the Percy Jackson movies. When I was a kid,
01:26 I loved them. I still do. I definitely think that my Percy Jackson is closer to the books
01:33 than the movies were. I think a big part of that is Percy's age. He's 12 years old. I
01:38 think it's very easy to forget, but I think it was very interesting to kind of explore
01:44 the fact that there's still children. "Mr. Jackson, you will learn to control yourself.
01:49 Do you understand me?" "Me?" "Do you understand me?" "He can't help it, Mrs. Dodds. Percy's
01:56 special." Meeting Rick, I met him in my final kind of audition when they told me I got the
02:03 part. I didn't know he was going to show up. I wore my Camp Half-Blood t-shirt that I got
02:08 in third grade. I was freaking out. And so the second time I met him, I was a lot more
02:12 calm and collected, so I could actually talk to him. He's given me a lot of tips and tricks
02:18 for playing Percy. The biggest thing was just to relax. He told me that he loved how we
02:24 were playing the characters and that we were doing great so far, which kind of like set
02:29 me in. And this was at the beginning, so it kind of made me relax a bit more and made
02:35 me kind of lock in. We did a full month of just training and rehearsing scenes. I did
02:45 a lot of underwater training and like sword fight training with the stunts team. We practiced
02:50 wires a lot. I did this scene where I'm falling, like an overhead shot of me falling down.
02:57 The chimera sequence when I fall off the arch in St. Louis. So I was on wires and I was
03:02 falling down. So we practiced that a couple times. We did a bunch of wire work and sword
03:06 fighting stuff.
03:07 [Music]
03:11 Normal day on set, I wake up at like 7.30. Me and my dad or mom, we drive over to set
03:17 and I get there around 8.30. I would get into my wardrobe, my clothes, and my sides would
03:25 be in my trailer. So I go over my sides, see what I'm doing that day, and then I go into
03:32 I think hair first. I'll get my hair done. If it was a day where I was going to be wet
03:37 all day, they would put this like slime in my hair to make it appear wet for the whole
03:42 day, which felt really weird, especially when they like wash it out. And normally they just
03:47 make me probably like three times more tan because I reflect light on the volume stage.
03:55 And sometimes, like there's a scene where I'm like deathly pale and I have like these
04:01 like red kind of, it's red all over my eyes and I look like I'm about to die. And what
04:07 I find so funny about watching that scene is that that day they decided not to put any
04:13 makeup on me other than the redness. So like the deathly pale you see, that's just my normal
04:18 like complexion. And then I go out to film. We go rehearse maybe like 9 o'clock, 9.30.
04:28 And then I go to school for like 30 minutes until they set up the shot. And we just go
04:33 back and forth, shooting, school, shooting, school. And then at the end of the day, I
04:40 head to my trailer, like wash all my makeup off, take my clothes off, put new clothes
04:43 on. I don't just take them off. Yeah, and then I head home and go to bed or play video
04:48 games. The first day on set, we were shooting at the Met on the volume stage. I keep saying
04:52 I film all these weird places, but the whole time it's on the volume stage. Just the scene
04:56 where it was me and Arina talking. We do this bit where we both have sandwiches and I would
05:01 take his meat off his sandwich and he would take my cheese. And that took like a week
05:05 of training. That was the first scene. I was definitely a bit nervous. Going back and watching
05:10 it, it's super hard to watch that scene specifically. I think like as the show goes on, like each
05:16 episode it kind of gets easier to watch because it's like closer to now. But that first scene,
05:21 it's like impossible for me and Arina to watch because that was our first day like ever filming
05:26 together. I think the hardest stunt sequence was the Minotaur fight. Not only because it
05:32 was just like I was fighting like a bull that doesn't exist. I think one of the most difficult
05:39 parts was that it was like pouring rain and it was dark. So I couldn't really see what
05:44 was going on and a lot of like my notes for camera were to open my eyes more, which is
05:49 really hard when it's like when there's rain coming in your eyes. There was a couple different
05:53 ways we shot the Minotaur sequence. One was there's this like really, really tall seven
06:00 foot guy and he was in the full skin tight gray mocap suit holding a Minotaur head. So
06:06 it was a lot less intimidating than you think it would be. So there was that when I was
06:11 fighting him with like the sword and then when I crawl onto his back, they shot that
06:16 in a very interesting way. So they made a mock up of the Minotaur like without arms
06:21 and from like the waist up. So I was on a wire and I'd sprint and they had like a little
06:27 bit of fur so I could grab onto it. I'd sprint around him and then I'd jump, grab onto the
06:32 back and then I'd get on his head. And they did a full sequence of me ripping the horn
06:37 off and stabbing him in the head. That took like maybe three days to shoot. It was a long
06:42 sequence. I was wearing a wool sweater while we were filming the Minotaur sequence, kind
06:47 of like this. But it was like real sheep wool. And so when it would rain, there was a very,
06:53 very terrible stench coming from my sweater and it kept getting like loose because I was
07:00 running around, it was pouring rain, it got heavy. And they would like constantly change
07:05 that out and then dry it. And we had two sweaters I think, they just rotate them. And so that
07:11 took a while. Sometimes we had to pause the scene so we could let the sweater dry out.
07:15 And also like Camp Half-Blood fight, I think that scene might have been like the hardest
07:20 technically to film because we're like running in sand. There's three of them. There's Dior
07:25 and then two of her cabin siblings. And so for every one move they did, I had to do three.
07:30 And so I was running backwards on like this rocky sand doing this amazing sword fight.
07:37 While we were filming that, I did not expect Dior to scream that loud. And if you look
07:45 at my face, I'm not acting. I was genuinely terrified she was going to hit me. I love
07:50 Dior. She's the sweetest person ever. But she's terrifying, which I think is perfect
07:54 for Clarice.
07:56 People listen closer when you talk. They work harder to be your friend.
08:00 I've never had like an actual friend group that I've been super connected to until I
08:07 found acting and I started Percy Jackson. And now I have like Leah and Charlie and Dior
08:13 and Arian of course. All these people that I feel like know how I'm feeling.
08:23 One of my favorite parts about Percy is that, and something that I hope fans take away from
08:28 it, is that there's a place for everyone. There's always somebody that knows what you're
08:33 going through. With Percy specifically, like how many things happen to him and how stressful
08:37 his life is, he's never lost like confidence or hope. He's never lost his sense of humor,
08:44 which I think is a really important lesson in real life.
08:47 [MUSIC PLAYING]