Walker Scobell just wants people to stop sending death threats to every teenage girl who might know him — and anybody else.
The 17-year-old Percy Jackson And The Olympians star announced Sunday on social media that he will be skipping his prom and called out those who are threatening everyone who could potentially be in his orbit because of where they live.
“Just to let everyone know, I will not be attending prom,” Scobell, who plays the titular demigod in the Disney+ series, wrote in a message posted to his Instagram Story. “Please stop sending death threats to EVERY teenage girl who could remotely be associated with me based on their proximity to where I live. It’s not fair to them or their families.”
“Maybe also just stop sending death threats in general,” he added. “That’s just not cool. Kinda weird I have to say this.”
“Kinda weird” indeed.
The actor previously said that it felt “a little bit weird” to go back to school after the first season of the series had been released but it helped that he’s been going to the same school since the fourth grade.
“Because I feel like I know everybody so well, and I’ve known them for such a long time that... it’s weirder to act like it’s weird,” Scobell told People earlier this year. “I feel like you just accept it right away, and everyone has, which has been super nice for me.”
This is not the first time the Percy Jackson franchise’s so-called fans have been out of line.
Aryan Simhadri, who portrays Percy’s best friend Grover Underwood in the series, spoke out last year about an unsettling encounter with a handsy fan when a group of “40 drunk college girls” recognised him.
“I was feeling pretty uncomfortable, so I put my hands in my back pockets,” Simhadri told Entertainment Weekly. “And then she reached around and put her hand inside of my back pocket, with my hand already in there. There’s not enough room in the back pocket of jeans for more than one hand. She lingered there a little longer than I would have liked. Not that I would have liked it at all.”
And Leah Jeffries, who plays Percy’s other best friend, Annabeth Chase, was the target of racist backlash when her casting was announced in 2022. Riordan, who also co-created the show, slammed the attacks in a blog post at the time, saying, “We should be able to agree that bullying and harassing a child online is inexcusably wrong.” - Los Angeles Times/Tribune News Service
