The daughter of Ares finds herself entangled in some accusations. Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 1 has chronicled the titular demigod’s cross-country quest to retrieve Zeus’s stolen master bolt, with those in power suspecting that Hades, the god of the underworld, is the lightning thief. That suspicion got turned on its head when Grover deduced that Ares was covering for someone, which led Luke to pinning the theft on the god of war’s favorite daughter, Clarisse La Rue.
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“I texted Charlie, I was like, ‘We have beef,’” Clarisse actress Dior Goodjohn joked to ComicBook.com when asked about her reaction to Luke’s (Charlie Bushnell) accusation. “He was like, ‘What’s going on?’ You’re calling me the lightning thief, bro! This is not okay. You’re not Pushing P right now.”
Goodjohn debuted as Clarisse in the second episode of Percy Jackson, giving the show’s namesake a hard time upon his arrival to Camp Half-Blood. While Percy has since left camp to pursue his quest, Goodjohn has kept a close eye on her on-screen rival.
“We did a watch party for the first two episodes. We tried to get together for the third, and then we’ve just been playing tag trying to figure out whose house we’re going to for each episode,” Goodjohn said. “It’s so fun. It’s like we’re a little family. It’s so cute.”
Percy Jackson and the Olympians represents Goodjohn’s biggest project to date. That said, the 17-year-old actress has been in the game far longer than her age suggests.
“I started when I was maybe two years old,” Goodjohn revealed. “My dad used to be an actor actually, but he stopped to help my mom open her dental office. When I was born, my parents introduced me to acting and I just stuck with it. That’s kind of how it all started.”
After spending the 2010s making one-off appearances on various television shows, Goodjohn’s first leading role came in 2021 when she starred in Head of the Class on HBO Max.
“It was such a good experience. I made my two best friends,” Goodjohn reflected. “Now I have a bunch more friends from Percy, but I made my two first best friends on that show.”
Goodjohn’s career has started to truly take off this decade. Following Head of the Class, Goodjohn booked Are You Afraid of the Dark?, a Nickelodeon series that she held a recurring role in. It was on that show’s set that Percy Jackson came on her radar.
“One of my friends that was on [Are You Afraid of the Dark?] with me was auditioning for one of the Percy characters,” Goodjohn recalled. “I read with them while they were doing their tape and I was like, ‘This would be really cool for me to audition for, but I don’t know if I’m going to get it.’ We finished shooting and then I went to LA to handle some stuff before I went back home to Iran. We’re in LA sorting our stuff out, and I got an audition for Clarisse.”
From there, Goodjohn got to researching, which made her fall in love with the daughter of Ares. On the page, Clarisse is much more than just a Camp Half-Blood bully. She is a leader in her own right and grows into one of the demigods’ most valued players in the ultimate fight against Kronos.
“I was on the phone with my acting coach and I was like, ‘What can I do to make myself stand out?’ I really, really wanted this role. She’s such a good character. Her story is so complex. My acting coach goes, ‘Well, I highly doubt anybody’s going to be doing spear choreography,’” Goodjohn shared. “I had a little recording studio situation in my bedroom, so I took apart my mic stand and put tinfoil on one of the ends of it to make an electric looking part. In my callback I did spear choreography. I actually slapped my computer with my mic stand and it almost broke, but it’s okay because I got the part!”
Goodjohn would report to set a couple of months later, which to her, wasn’t just another set. It felt like the real Camp Half-Blood.
“It was so surreal. It was an insane feeling. It was all outside. The only other thing that I shot inside was the bathroom scene where I shove Walker’s head into a toilet. I remember me and my mom walked onto the set. We didn’t understand the magnitude of Percy until we got on set and saw Camp Half-Blood,” Goodjohn noted. “We both looked at each other and then looked back and just kept walking. We were like, ‘Oh my God. So this is the biggest deal ever?’
“I feel like cumulatively I was probably on set for maybe two, three months, of me actually being on set. I was flying just like Charlie, honestly. We were on the same flight a lot of the time. We were flying in and out for maybe eight months, nine months.”
Arriving to Percy Jackson production essentially resembled starting college. Disney+ laid out an eight-month filming schedule, more-or-less the length of a school year, and brought together castmembers from all corners of the globe.
“I remember being so nervous the first day. I went into the makeup trailer and I saw Leah Jeffries there. She was getting her hair braided and I was so nervous,” Goodjohn said. “That’s Annabeth. She was on Empire. She’s so good. Then she was like, ‘Oh my God, girl, I love your hair.’ Immediately the guard went down. I remember us all going out to dinner for the first time. It was just so fun and we all just kind of clicked.”
That friendship with Jeffries became the foundation for Goodjohn’s camaraderies with the rest of her Percy Jackson co-stars.
“When they say that young Hollywood is like a cult, it is. We all know each other, everybody’s going through the same thing and everybody’s friends with each other,” Goodjohn said. “Depending on what set you’re on, you can either be really tight knit with your cast or it can be really choppy. Luckily with Percy, everybody got along so well and we kind of instantly formed this little family.”
All of Goodjohn’s Season 1 scenes were limited to the Camp Half-Blood set specifically, but her character’s presence stretched much farther than the New York woods.
Adam Copeland makes his debut as Ares, Clarisse’s father, in Percy Jackson Episode 5, echoing the same level of authentic fear that anyone in the god of war’s family instills.
“Dude, I’m watching that episode and I’m just like, ‘You’re an amazing actor.’ He’s so good,” Goodjohn reacted to Copeland’s Ares performance. “We have a stacked cast. I don’t think there’s one weak link in this show. He’s so good and he’s so good at just being on all the time.”
Those Camp Half-Blood limitations will be shattered if Percy Jackson returns for a sophomore installment. It is already known that a hypothetical will cover The Sea of Monsters, the second story in the Percy Jackson pentalogy. That book sees Clarisse have an enhanced role, as she is granted that story’s quest.
“I’m just happy that I get to caption an army full of dead people. That’s so cool. You can’t tell me that’s not awesome. I can’t wait to see what the ship’s going to look like and what everybody’s makeup is going to look like,” Goodjohn said when asked about her Season 2 hopes. “My biggest thing that I’m excited for is when I have my conversation with my dad (Ares) and he’s like, ‘You’re going to do this and you’re going to do this by yourself. I don’t care if you’re going to die.’”
Percy Jackson and the Olympians streams new episodes every Tuesday at 9 PM ET on Disney+.
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