Well, the Percy Jackson and the Olympians finale is here and I don’t know about you, but I’m already missing Percy, Annabeth and Grover going on quests together. As fans of the Rick Riordan book series know, there are many more adventures for the trio to go on, we’re just waiting on Disney to hit the greenlight on a Season 2. Prior to the series premiere, the actress behind Annabeth, Leah Jeffries, shared with us that she was already reading ahead in her spare time… even in class.
When CinemaBlend sat down with the leading trio of the Percy Jackson cast back in December, I asked them how Rick Riordan's books are playing a part in their preparation for the TV show and whether they’ve been reading ahead at all. Here’s what Jeffries said (also in the video above):
I just went to Barnes & Noble not that long ago to get a new book of the Percy Jackson books. I got the comic book version this time. They look so cool too. It’s amazing. I've been reading them. I actually brought them with me, and I was reading them in school and everything. Like my teacher was even like ‘This is not the book we're reading in this class, put that down.’ But, I am kind of trying to read ahead, but stay in the same [place] at the same time. So like right now I started back on the Sea Of Monsters and I have the Titan’s Curse, so I'm gonna do those. I'm just redoing everything though, but with the pictures there that way I can at least have the imagery of what's to come.
Leah Jeffries is so excited for the future of Annabeth Chase that the girl is getting busted in class for reading ahead! As she told us, she’s been getting into the graphic novel versions of the Percy Jackson series to get a better visual sense of what her character and the others have coming for them next.
There are six total books of the Percy Jackson series that were published between 2005 and 2023. The Sea of Monsters is the second book that Season 2 would be based on, and The Titan’s Curse is book three. After that is The Battle of the Labyrinth and The Last Olympian. For a long time, that was all the Percy Jackson books, but last year Riordan returned to the characters that started it all with The Chalice of the Gods.
During the interview, Aryan Simhadri, who plays Grover in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians TV show weighed in on the topic too. In his words:
Yeah, it’s kind of helpful. This isn't something that I really thought about before, but I just realized when we started shooting, having [definitive knowledge about] where all the characters end up before you even get into it is so nice, because when you start out your journey sometimes you're like unsure of like, ‘Oh, how is this character even gonna grow at all?’ But you know exactly where every character ends up. So you kind of know what to do, how your character would respond to things that might come up. And it's just, it's nice to have so much information about this one character and it's really nice.
While many actors often have the script and only the script to turn to when it comes to formulating their characters, these kids have six books and the author himself to refer to! Following the end of the first season, we cannot wait to see these three actors continue to play these characters, growth spurts and all! Season 1 was only the introduction to Camp Half-Blood and the quests that are to come for these heroic demigods!
You can stream all eight episodes of Percy Jackson and the Olympians right now with a Disney+ subscription and Hulu subscription. We’ll keep you posted about what we learn about the future of the series, because we can’t wait to return to this Greek mythology world!
