Percy Jackson Sea of Monsters Set Visit Interviews

The former Six Flags theme park in Louisiana, which was closed after the damage and flooding wreaked by Hurricane Katrina, is alight for the first time since that devastating event. In the years that followed, it had become part of the surrounding swamp, and home to alligators, armadillos, snakes and the other flora and fauna of this part of the world. It was about as far from habitable as could be.

But the crew of PERCY JACKSON: SEA OF MONSTERS have moved in for a two-week shoot at the park, which will double for the damaged lair of the blind cyclops Polythemus as part of a new quest for the character first brought to the big screen in 2010’s PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLYMPIANS: THE LIGHTNING THIEF, which grossed more than $200M at the global box office. The crew has spent the past five weeks getting it ready: laying down new wiring and adding to the rundown nature of the place. Oh, and moving the alligators out.

“It’s a pretty eerie set and a pretty harsh environment to work in,” says Logan Lerman, who returns to the title role. “Hot, humid and full of bugs.”

“They took out all the alligators that had been there, but there are still armadillos other creatures walking around,” laughs Alexandra Daddario, who returns to the role of Annabeth. “So you’re sitting there in the mud, tied up to posts, with bugs crawling all over you: all you can do is laugh. It’s either laugh or cry, and it’s best to laugh!”

Still, if it seems like the cast and crew are enduring hardships to bring this story to the screen, their quest is nothing to that of their heroically inclined fictional counterparts, and it’s born of a keen desire to return to the Olympian world of PERCY JACKSON. “There was definitely a period of time when we wondered: will that be it?” remembers Lerman. “It was fantastic when this movie came together, and it was nice to have that period of time away.  It’s great to come back into the old shoes and play Percy again.”

Indeed, all of the returning cast are enthused to return, as much to see each other as to follow Percy’s adventures. “I’ve become so close to these people,” says Daddario. “Logan and Brandon Jackson, I’m so close with them that it’s like going to do a film with your best friends. It’s a level of familiarity which means you feel really comfortable.”

But while the characters are the same, the journey they’re on is different. In PERCY JACKSON: SEA OF MONSTERS, the safety of the demigods’ home at Camp Half-Blood is threatened when the perimeter defences are destroyed. Percy, Annabeth and their satyr protector Grover (played by a returning Brandon T. Jackson) must quest to find the Golden Fleece, which is in the care of the violent blind cyclops Polythemus, so that they can bring life back to Thalia’s Tree, the mystical oak that keeps their home safe.

“At the end of the first film Percy was the hero,” explains Lerman of his character’s journey. “But at the start of this one, he’s been replaced by Clarisse, the stronger, better demigod at Camp Half-Blood. He feels insecure, he’s full of self-doubt, and he’s constantly being beaten by Clarisse.”

Played by Leven Rambin, a newcomer to the series, Clarisse is the half-blood daughter of Ares, the god of war. And she’s fixing for battle at every opportunity. “She’s a bully,” says Lerman. “She’s very competitive, very tough and she stomps on Percy at every opportunity.”

But if Percy is feeling the heat, at least he still has the support of his friends. Fans of the books will be especially pleased to learn that Annabeth dons blonde locks in the films for the first time in SEA OF MONSTERS, just like her character in the books. “I think the character is more in touch with the books too,” argues Daddario. “This is a very difficult and emotional journey for her, more so than in the first film, because she’s questing to save a character who’s very close to her.”

Daddario won’t be drawn on just who it is she’s questing to save, but fans of Greek myth will know that satyrs and quests for the Golden Fleece don’t mix. “We’re all older and a little wiser,” reveals Jackson. “And my character really doesn’t want to go on this quest. He knows that cyclops eat satyrs for breakfast. This one’s a death wish for him.”

It doesn’t help that a cyclops turns up at Camp Half-Blood before Percy and co. even get a chance to set off. Tyson, played by series newcomer Douglas Smith, turns out to be Percy’s half-brother, the product of Poseidon’s dalliance with a nymph. “Cyclopes have a reputation for being monsters,” explains director Thor Freudenthal. “So his arrival is bad news for a lot of the half-bloods, including Percy.”

“Brotherhood and the importance of family is definitely a new theme for the series,” continues Lerman, whose character is jealous of the apparently close relationship Tyson has with Poseidon, who doesn’t appear to communicate with Percy at all. “We had a great time playing it: Douglas was a blast and was a great addition to the cast.”

Tyson accompanies the trio on their quest this time, much to the chagrin of Annabeth. “If you’ve read the books, you’ll know she has a solid reason for disliking Cyclopes,” reveals Daddario. “And so part of the journey of the film is all of them learning to accept Tyson. Is he a good guy or a bad guy? Will he mess everything up or help save the day?”

Indeed, she says, it’s part of the charm of the PERCY JACKSON films that these high-concept themes still offer relatable themes to audiences of all ages. “Always in life you’ll meet people you’re not sure of and maybe you’ll take against them for the wrong reasons, so it’s relatable in that way.”

Continues Freudenthal: “Tyson comes in with the best of intentions and with incredibly strong will and excitement. So as much as he mixes things up within the group, in the end he really helps Percy become the hero he needs to become.”

Freudenthal himself is mixing things up. He comes to PERCY JACKSON: SEA OF MONSTERS fresh to the franchise – Chris Columbus directed the first film – and brings a new sensibility to Rick Riordan’s popular world. “He’s completely different from Chris,” says Lerman. “Tonally, the movies are very different because of the different filmmakers. I think this is definitely lighter than the first one. It’s more comedic, and more fun. I loved that about his vision.”

Many directors would feel intimidated following in the footsteps of Columbus, who is a veteran of films like HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE, MRS. DOUBTFIRE and HOME ALONE. But Freudenthal was grateful for the work Columbus had done to establish the universe of PERCY JACKSON. “I was able to build on what Chris had done and go from there. I could have fun with the world and maybe refine the tone for myself. I have a very different visual style than Chris, which I can’t even necessarily pinpoint. The first movie does the job of establishing things for you, so your job is to dive in deeper, broaden the range, expand the world and have fun with the relationships and the characters.”

Freudenthal was also keen to bring in more of the book than the screen time of the first film allowed. “I wanted to expand the grand mythology of it, having to do with the character of Thalia and the tree that she becomes,” he explains. “What I really liked about the books is that they have their first person narrative as if written by Percy. So there’s a sort of lightness to that, a bit of irreverent humor and style that is firmly in place in this movie.”

And while THE LIGHTNING THIEF introduces the Olympian Gods, this film deals more in the fauna of their world, and all its various beasties. “Scale-wise this is a much bigger movie,” enthuses Lerman. “There are so many more creatures and visual effects. It’s huge.”

Agrees Daddario: “The monsters definitely get bigger! We go to the Sea of Monsters and something pretty unbelievable happens there. We really take the cliffhanger moments to a different level this time around.”

Freudenthal is enthusiastic about this kind of quest moviemaking. Every day, he says, there’s a new challenge and a new “mini-movie” to shoot. “It’s a dream because I felt like, within our four months of shooting, we were dealing with so many different methods of making a movie in so many different places, whether it’s digital, practical, location shooting and the rest. It keeps you on your toes, I’ll say that.”

Keeping the entire cast on their toes was the inclusion this time around of veterans Stanley Tucci and Nathan Fillion to the ensemble. “That’s the great thing about these movies is you’re there the whole time and all these great actors come in,” says Daddario. “The people I get to work with and learn from are unbelievable.”

Working with Tucci was a master-class for Jackson, a stand-up-turned-actor who admired his co-star’s comic chops. “He had this off-kilter approach to the character, which takes a certain talent,” he remembers. “He gave Dionysus this, ‘don’t want to be here,’ swagger, which is great for the show because everyone knows a camp counsellor never wants to be there but he’s doing it for the check or is burdened by the kids. So he’s like, ‘Go do a quest, I’ll be over here.’”

Of course, for a film defined by clashes with monsters, there are plenty of scrapes for the cast to get themselves into this time. Freudenthal was amazed at how much Lerman, Daddario and Jackson knew about stunts, fighting and wire work. “They were so much more experienced with all that stuff than I was,” he laughs. “But this movie presented different physical challenges for them in that we didn’t want to repeat the action of the first film. Based on their old experiences they were ready to take things to the next level.”

Lerman remembers three months of fight training on the first PERCY JACKSON film, so was grateful all of that knowledge was inherent to begin with, and the time didn’t need repeating for SEA OF MONSTERS. “It was insane,” he says. “It was our first time doing anything like this so we really had to figure it out. I’d never held a sword before. But now we kind of know what we’re doing and it was much, much easier to jump back into it.”

Lerman says that after two movies playing Percy he knows his way around a sword. So is he a dangerous man to be around? “I think so,” he laughs. “But then, I think anyone would probably be. I think it’s pretty easy. You just chop.”

So after two PERCY JACKSON movies, Lerman certainly knows his way around a sword. And if anything’s certain about their quest this time out, it’s that combat will play a big part. As with everything in Percy’s world, only the most courageous need apply.

Now You See Me Jesse Eisenberg Interview

Jesse Eisenberg joined co-star Isla Fisher in London for a Q&A event to promote their magical new film Now You See Me. The film has already worked it’s magic on the US Box Office prompting immediate talk of a sequel. Here’s what famously fast talking star Jesse had to say:

Tell us a bit about your character?

I play a slight of hand magician so my biggest danger was probably a paper cut. I got several of those… in weird places. Atlas is like the greatest sight of hand magician in the world, the kind of guy who realised at 5 years old he didn’t want to have a normal life so he just stayed in his bedroom and practised magic. Now he has developed the attitude of someone who thinks he’s the best at something. So he’s a great magician and basically a bit of an arrogant guy.

Is Atlas his real name?

Yeah it is he’s Jewish… they changed it at Ellis Island. No, really he’s created a magic persona, like David Copperfield which is actually a Dickens novel.

You character’s quite a showman, did that come naturally for you?

Isla and I play these confident magicians and I think both of us have a little stage fright in general. I think at least for me and for Isla too something just got switched on in us. When you get into a character that’s really comfortable performing on stage you just trick yourself into feeling that confidence. Then you feel it for real.

What was it like filming magic shows in front of thousands of people?

That scene was filmed primarily with the camera on a cable and it was circling the stage. The opening shot is several minutes long and it tracks all around us performing and then ends up on a close up of Morgan Freeman who’s sitting in the audience. It was complicated to shoot these scenes but also fun because you get to perform like a full length show as opposed to just shooting it piecemeal. We filmed the shows over the course of weeks; it took so long to film them all. So it was almost like we practised on camera. By the time we were doing it fully it was almost like we’d done it for days.

Can you still do any magic tricks now in real life?

I’ve retained some of the muscle memory for little tricks. But one of the weird things about this job is that you learn how to do and immerse yourself in something so specific for a concentrated period of time. Then at the end you leave and move on to something else and you never have a chance to use that weird skill again.

Why do you think people are so fascinated by Magic?

It’s like Santa Clause for adults. You want to believe in something not real and it’s fun to believe in that. It’s interesting because when I was practicing magic on set I would perform for the crew and after I would do a trick I would inevitably tell them how I did it because I felt too strange keeping the trick from them. I learned very quickly that people wanted to be deceived. There’s something fun in not knowing the secret.

How did you train and prepare for the role?

David Kwong was the magic consultant for this movie and was our magic teacher. He was great and available for us for like a month before the movie 24 hrs a day. He was also instrumental in coming up with some of the illusions that are in the movie.

What was it like working with your Director Louis Leterrier?

He French and he actually gave me these obscure French movies; he said he wanted the acting to be like in these movies. I was sceptical because when I read the script it seemed like it was this very plot driven movie that was big and broad in scope. He said I want to get great actors to do this and I wanted the acting to be treated the way it was in these French films. Gerrard Depardiue wasn’t available, because he was in Belgium not paying any taxes. But the director followed through on both of those things. He followed through on getting great actors and on treating the actors with respect. On a movie like this the acting can get a little lost because the plot is so interesting that the acting can be seen as secondary. But that just wasn’t the case here. We were given a lot of time to try things.

What made his approach so special?

He did the most amazing thing which I’ve never seen done on a movie which is to film two actors doing the same conversation one after the other, but then go back if you’ve learned something from what the second actor has done and reshoot the first one. Things like that never happen, especially on an independent movie that would be considered more of a character driven movie. Normally you just don’t have the time.

How much room if any was there for improvising given the complex plot?

Before shooting we’d worked out what parts of the script were malleable and what parts weren’t. There were a lot of scenes where what we did in the small meat of it wouldn’t affect the plot in a substantive way so in those moments we’d be able to improvise. We were able to come up with things like backstories. For Atlas and Henely we came up with this complicated history where she was my assistant and had a crush on me, but then she became very successful and I felt threatened by her success. We were still able to improvise within that very complicated framework.

We’ve heard you helped bring Woody Harrelson to the project, what was it like working together again?

I’d known Woody Harrelson for a while and we’d wanted to do something together and this presented a great opportunity to do that. It meant that we got to work together but in a different dynamic from Zombieland. Its fun to work with the same people but it’s less fun to work with them in the exact same dynamic. In this movie we play rival magicians who are both a little competitive with each other because we both think we’re the best in our respective fields. I’m a slight of hand guy and he’s like a mentalist. He’s really funny and works very hard, he comes up with like a million variations of a joke and he tries them all out.

Speaking of Zombieland do you think there’s still any chance we’ll see a sequel?

We wanted to do a sequel to Zombieland but then they tried to do a TV series instead. Then someone told me the TV series was cancelled so maybe it will happen again. Although it seems like maybe you wouldn’t want to do a movie after a TV series. Zombieland was originally written as a TV series so it made sense that they wanted to try to make it into a show. But they should have made a sequel I think.

We heard you came back to reshoot much of the end of the film, why was that?

It’s not atypical of a movie like this where there’s so many little plot details. They also ended up not using about 90% of what we reshot. In a movie like this you want to make sure it’s perfectly clear and constantly interesting. When you have a complicated plot like this obviously sometimes you end up shooting scenes that don’t wind up in the movie.

Was there anything you were happy was changed?

When we shot this movie we filmed in New Orleans which has been ravaged by several natural disasters and we would be raining fake money on these people, you could see that even though they knew it wasn’t real there was still an intense kind of anger and joy there. You realised how real hose feelings are. It felt sanctimonious because it’s a fictional movie and we’re not actually giving money back, so it seemed odd to reference a real disaster there.

How easy do you think Now You See Me is to follow?

It’s the kind of film when you read the script you have to go slowly but when you’re actually watching it it’s a very visual type of movie, it’s not very dialogue driven really. The director is very visual in the way he shoots scenes from all these different angles so that afterwards in the editing room he can choose how much to reveal and how much to hide. There’s all these twists in the movies and he shot it multiple ways to have the opportunity to be able to reveal only what he wanted to.

Now You See Me will be magically appearing in cinemas across the UK on 3rd July. 

Check out a bonus Gallery of Q&A pictures below: