Percy Jackson’s Walker Scobell on What Calms Him Down When Role Feels ‘Daunting’ (Exclusive)

Becoming Percy Jackson is no small feat.

In Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the Disney+ series adapted from Rick Riordan’s bestselling book series, Walker Scobell plays the titular character, a demigod navigating the dangerous world of gods and monsters.

Season 1 premiered in December 2023, when Scobell was 14. It returned for season 2 — which is based on the second book of Riordan’s series, Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters — last month, and filming is underway on season 3.

For Scobell, now 17, the role is “still terrifying.”

“I think it’s definitely still daunting. You really want to do it right,” he tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “It’s a big responsibility.”

Given the pressure he feels, the actor, who was just 13 when he was cast, says having the author on board makes all the difference.

“That’s why I love having Rick on board as a writer and a producer of the show, because it’s so nice to know that, anything that happens, anything that changes, this is him. This is still Percy Jackson,” Scobell says. “It calms me down a lot to think about that.”

The role came for Scobell shortly after he made his screen debut in The Adam Project. He played the younger version of Ryan Reynolds in the 2022 Netflix film and went viral for his perfect recollection of several monologues from Deadpool 2.

He was cast as Percy a month after the film came out, and calls the show “an amazing opportunity.”

“I was a huge fan of the books before, and you don’t get the opportunity very often to be a part of one of these amazing worlds like this,” he says. “Growing up, I’ve always wanted to be part of the Marvel Universe and the Star Wars universe and stuff like that.”

“Being able to be a part of one of these universes is just insane to think about,” Scobell says.

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After he was cast, Scobell made it no secret that he was a big fan of Logan Lerman, who was the first to portray the titular demigod in two films adapted from Riordan’s books in 2010 and 2013 — though the author was not shy about his disapproval of those adaptations.

He told PEOPLE in 2022 he had “not yet” been in touch with Lerman, 33, but was hoping he would reach out. “That would be really cool. I’d like to hear some advice from Logan Lerman, I really liked his Percy Jackson.”

Now, the actors are friends and they “talk and text from time to time,” Lerman told IMDb last year.

“They’re really a sweet group of kids, really talented and nice people,” he said of Scobell’s costars, Aryan Simhadri, who plays Grover Underwood, and Leah Sava Jeffries, who plays Annabeth Chase.

New episodes of Percy Jackson and the Olympians premiere Wednesdays on Disney+.