Disney Plus ‘Percy Jackson & The Olympians’ Series Casts Netflix’s ‘Resident Evil’ Star Tamara Smart As Race-Swapped Version Of Thalia Grace
In continuing its trend of race-swapping its characters, Disney’s Percy Jackson & The Olympians star has cast actor Tamara Smart as its version of Zeus’ spear-wielding daughter, Thalia Grace.
Perhaps best known for portraying a race-swapped Juliet Butler in Disney’s 2020 Artemis Fowl adaptation and the younger version of Jade Wesker in Netflix’s terrible Resident Evil series, Smart’s casting in Percy Jackson‘s second season was announced on September 23rd via an official press release issued by the House of Mouse and franchise creator Rick Riordan.
“Thalia Grace is one of the most important characters in the Percy Jackson universe, so the right casting was critical. Thalia is a powerful warrior, a fiercely loyal friend, and a demigod rebel with a very ‘punk’ / ‘rage-against-the-machine’ sensibility,” said Riordan of the casting decision. “As soon as we saw Tamara Smart play this role, we knew we had found our daughter of Zeus. She was, no pun intended, electric. Tamara puts the ‘grace’ in Thalia Grace!”
Offering her own statement, Smart herself asserted, “I’m so grateful and excited to be joining the cast of Percy Jackson and the Olympians.”
Making reference to her time working with the late Percy Jackson Zeus actor Lance Reddick on the set of the aforementioned Resident Evil series, she then recalled, “It’s so close to my heart. [He] and I always spoke about working together again, so it’s that much more special and important to me to play his daughter once more as Thalia, and to keep his memory alive. I feel his presence all around me and strive to make him proud on this exciting journey.”
And in doing a disservice to the young Smart, who is herself a talented actress in her own right, her casting as Thalia represents yet another instance of lazy Hollywood pandering-via-race-swapping.
Though the exact details of Thalia’s skin color are not mentioned during her debut in in The Sea of Monsters and subsequent adventures throughout the rest of the Percy Jackson & The Olympians books, The Lost Hero, the first entry of its sequel series, The Heroes Of Olympus, has Annabeth note upon seeing a picture of her and her brother that “In the picture, Thalia looked nothing like him. They both had blue eyes, but that was it. Her hair was black. Her complexion was more Mediterranean” – that particular descriptor notably not one typically used to describe black skin.
To this end, in all of her prior depictions, as seen in the official The Sea of Monsters graphic novel adaptation, Rick Riordan’s own website, and in artist Antonio Caparo’s artwork for the original Percy Jackson & The Olympians novels – all of which were approved by Riordan himself – the young warrior is shown having explicitly white skin.
Further, Thalia’s original appearance was adhered to 20th Century Fox’s previous attempt at a live-action Percy Jackson film series, wherein she was briefly portrayed at the end of The Sea of Monsters by Paloma Kwiatkowski.
As noted above, Thalia is far from the first Camp Half-Blood attendee to be race-swapped for the Disney Plus series.
In addition to Zeus’ daughter, the characters of Grover Underwood, Annabeth Chase, and the Greek god Hermes have all been changed during their translation to live-action, with their roles being portrayed respectively by Aryan Simhadri, Leah Sava Jeffries, and Lin Manuel-Miranda.
At current, the second season of Disney’s Percy Jackson & The Olympians series is set to return sometime in 2025.
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