I Genuinely Can't Watch The First Four Episodes Of "Percy Jackson" The Same Way After Reading These BTS Facts

"The only real thing I was interested in was, Can we find actors who embody the character, the personality, the energy of the young heroes that they're playing? Where's the voice? Where's the humor? Where's the chemistry?" Rick explained. "So, that was the challenge. And it became pretty clear when we were watching Walker [Scobell], Aryan [Simhadri], and Leah [Sava Jeffries] do their auditions, reading the actual lines from the scripts that they had exactly that. They embodied the way I imagine these characters sounding and acting in my head when I write the Percy Jackson books."

Rick recalled, "Walker really is a fan of the books. He had been reading them since he was a little guy. He told me recently that since I'd seem him last, he's read the book series again. He's a super fan. One of the first questions his dad asked him when he got into acting apparently was, 'What do you want to do? Who do you want to be?' And the first thing he said was, 'I want to be Percy Jackson.' And that never wavered. So, he came into it with that kind of energy and commitment."

Rick said, "We were aware that Walker was doing that. We knew that he had done other work. But, we had not seen The Adam Project or anything else prior. All that did, when we saw The Adam Project, was just confirm that we'd made the right call."

"It's one thing to find a great actor, it's another thing to find THREE great actors that work well together," Rick began. "So it was important that they had that, you know, sort of team building experience, and that they could embody what it is to be a trio that really becomes a team over the course of the quest."

"I didn't really have any particular actor in mind for any particular part. People often ask me if I 'dream cast' my own books, and no, I never do. I just went into the process, looking at the tapes that came in, seeing the way that the actors read their lines," Rick explained. "We were just very fortunate that a lot of the actors who came to this project came to it for sort of the same reason Walker did, that they loved the books and had a personal connection. Many of our adult actors have children who have read the books. Their children were the ones who were saying, 'Oh, yes, you have to do this.' So there's a real personal commitment to it that they want to do a good job not only because they're professionals, but because they love the material and they want to do right by their own families."

"We needed to ground that relationship very quickly and very powerfully because then we will not see Sally for quite a while. She needs to be a presence that is still with us," Rick began. "In the book, that's a little easier because we're in Percy's POV. And we can hear him thinking about her and remembering her. So she's a presence that is easier to establish in a book. Whereas on the screen, you really need to see her. So that's why she got a lot of great screen time. Virginia [Kull] is amazing. She's incredible. And again, she has kids that are fans. Many times she said to me, 'Rick, are you happy? Is there anything you need me to do to make this character better?' And I said, 'You're doing it perfectly. Just keep doing what you're doing.'"

Rick explained, "That was the advantage of having the books as a guideline and as a blueprint because, obviously, I know the five book arc, and writers in the room also were familiar with it and knew where we are potentially going. So we had a roadmap that was very clear. Even though we might take different stops here or there or pay more attention to one scene than another scene, we all had the final goal in mind. If, god willing, we get to do five seasons and show the entire Percy Jackson story, we were able to make sure that we had seeded in those things in the narrative that would pay off in later seasons. It was very satisfying to be able to do that. I'm a plotter. I like a good well-constructed story. So it was nice to be able to follow the books in that way."

He said, "We have to get Percy to camp, introduce you to camp, introduce a whole bunch of characters, make you fall in love with all of them, and then turn it on its head and send Percy right out the door again, on his quest. So it was a lot to get that in. It was a very challenging episode."

Speaking about the attention to detail at Camp Half-Blood, Rick said, "Our production designer Dan Hennah did a superb job rendering images of what he thought it would look like and what the big house would look like, what the cabins might be. We had a lot of conversations, and he just did an amazing job. I thought I was prepared to see it for the first time because I'd seen the drawings and the mock-ups and all of that. But then when Becky [Riordan] and I walked on set the day that they were filming at camp for the first time, we sort of came over this hill, then you walk into the woods, and it opened up, and there was Camp Half-Blood. With the ponds and the torches and the cabins, and it was unreal. It was just incredible."

Rick explained, "The neat thing about it is that camp was sort of an amalgamation of many different sites. We didn't shoot every piece of Camp Half-Blood at the same location. There might be some parts of camp that are an hour away from this camp. So what you're seeing is the perfect version of camp, put together from a whole lot of different locations."

"It's such a critical and formative scene in the Percy Jackson story, that it was wonderful to see it come to life. It was incredible. It was probably better than I had imagined," Rick began. "Just because, again, it involved the work of dozens, if not hundreds, of creative minds, not just me. So it was better than one person could have rendered. When you watch the capture the flag scene, I don't remember how long it is, it's like six minutes or something. You're looking at weeks of work, and every single scene was done over many, many days. And the kids were fighting with the swords over and over and over again to get just the right shot. It was a lot of work for them."

Speaking about that moment further, Rick added, "I think one of the things I'm really happy with is our decision to give Annabeth a little more agency. In the book, she knows what's going on. But she does not actively push Percy into the water."

"You see the story, this is the same story, but it's from multiple angles that you wouldn't necessarily have Percy knowing about. One of the most beautiful is later in the season when there is a flashback to young Percy and Sally. You really feel how hard it is for Sally, being a single mom of a kid who's a handful and who has changed school so many times, who has learning differences and accommodation needs, and doesn't want to go to another school," Rick said. "She is trying her best. But there is a scene where she just gets to the point where she's feeling pretty down. In this moment she interacts with Poseidon, and they have a conversation about their son. It is so heartwarming and so tender. It just brings tears to my eyes just every time I see it."

Rick explained, "Jessica [Parker Kennedy] was fantastic. She did really inhabit that character so well. It was important for us again, going back to the the idea of multiple points of view, that we refresh that scene. Medusa has her own point of view. There is a reason that she is the way she is, and she has perfectly legitimate grievances with the Gods. So it was really nice to be able to explore that a little bit. And to also make the connection between Medusa and Sally. They have very, strangely enough, similar experiences. So I think that deepened that whole dynamic a lot."

Rick recalled, "That was an amazing set. That was way out in the woods. That was also the day we had a warning: Just look out for the bears. And sure enough, there's a bunch of black bears just gorging themselves on blackberries. It was amazing."

Speaking about the importance of this moment, which is seen in Episode 4, Rick said, "One of the highlights for me was bringing that to life FINALLY, because it is so critical. It's the midpoint of the season, it's Percy's moment where he's really having his faith and everything tested. Again, it was a hard thing to nail. We had lots of conversations in the writers' room, trying to get that moment just right. It was a combination of really productive conversations in the writers room, and also just great acting. The actors took what we gave them, and they made it transcendent. They made it into a living experience."

"It made it into the first trailer actually because it was just so fortuitous. The camera crew saw them and were like, 'Get the owls! Get the owls!'" Rick recalled.

Teasing the rest of Season 1, Rick said, "The fifth episode, I am particularly fond of because it's where we meet Ares, and we have the water ride. I think I like that one because by that point in the series, our actors had really come together as a team, not only on screen, but also off screen, and they were cooking. I mean, they knew each other so well, they were getting into their parts. They knew what they were doing. I think the series gets even better. In Episode 5, you really see it. All three of the kids, they BRING IT. The scene on the water ride with Walker and Leah. And also, Grover has a great interaction with Ares that isn't in the book, but is really, really fun."