A new season of Percy Jackson and the Olympians is set to begin later this week. It will adapt the storyline from Richard Riordan’s second novel of the source material, The Sea of Monsters. A new season brings new characters, and one new addition who will play a significant role is Tyson.
The character was described by Riordan as “a shy, awkward, endearing cyclops” last summer during San Diego Comic-Con. He is played by actor Daniel Diemer. Recently, he was asked about the challenges of bringing this uniquely layered character to life for the series.
The first step was creating an approach internally for Tyson. Diemer said, “I think it was just trying to figure out the order of how to build the character. I think, um, again, I- I’d read the books, I’d been such a fan, and so from the moment I got the first audition, I knew kind of the center of what I wanted to build him around, from the- kind of the vulnerability, this innocence, this, um, just- just build him out from a character that’s full of love and- and kind of heart at- at the center.”
Afterwards, Diemer worked on the physicality and cyclops side of Tyson. He explained, “I wanted to make sure that it was kind of like the- especially because of the younger aspect of Tyson in the books, there’s this kind of getting used to his body still—he’s been growing like crazy over the last, like, seven, eight years, um, but he’s been also on- on the street, so there’s like a getting accustomed to the world that he’s in, there’s a getting accustomed to his body, and so I really wanted curiosity to kind of be at the forefront.”
Going one step further, he even took the physiology of the mythological creature into consideration. Because Tyson did not have two eyes like humans, he sees the world in a different way. “[B]ut then with the eye too, it’s like again, like, the way that we see the world three-dimensionally is just having two kind of eyes, you know, to kind of layer everything together. With only one, depth perception just- it just doesn’t exist in the same sort of way.
Diemer continued, “So whenever there was, like, big action sequences, there was a little bit more- I wanted to make the- the movements a little bit more careful, as if he’s still trying to find his footing. Um, but- and- and then so then kind of, like, layering that in with, like, a- getting a little more hunched, a little bit more protective. He’s still kind of scared of the world and doesn’t want anybody to kind of- I mean, he’s- he hasn’t been accepted for a very long time, so I think the physicality of bringing that all in really changes kind of how you feel in the moment as well. And so the emotions and kind of the relationships kind of build from just that physical structure.”
The wait to meet Tyson is almost here.
The season two premiere of Percy Jackson and the Olympians releases Wednesday, December 10, on Disney+.
