The mighty Percy Jackson was nearly waylaid by a prop microphone during his Monday-night visit to NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
In what quickly became a very cute, semi-viral moment, Walker Scobell—who headlines Disney+’s adaptation of the Rick Riordan fantasy series, and was making his late-night TV debut—conspicuously leaned down to answer Jimmy Fallon by speaking into the non-working microphone situated on the near corner of the host’s desk.
After Scobell’s first answer, which commented on the unexpectedly large Tonight Show audience, elicited cheers and applause, Fallon gently advised the first-time guest, “You don’t have to speak into this microphone…. You can just talk regular.”
In the moment, Scobell was sweetly and ever-so-slightly chagrined by the mix-up. Some 12 hours later, when speaking with LateNighter at a Television Critics Association press event tied to Percy Jackson and the Olympians‘ imminent Season 2 finale, he chalked it up to being but one part of a whirlwind, “crazy night.”
#PercyJackson star Walker Scobell adorably stepped up to the wrong mic during his 'Tonight Show' visit — aka his late-night TV debut! pic.twitter.com/fvq00E34Pg
— LateNighter (@latenightercom) January 20, 2026
“What’s weird is they bring you out a little bit before and you test things out, see what it looks like…,” Scobell said of his Tonight Show prep. “And I think what they did when I leaned over to talk into the [prop] mic is they turned on my [lapel] mic,” leading the upcoming guest to think the desk mic was hot.
“I thought, ‘Oh! This is how this works,'” he said of the practice run. “And then I got there [for the actual taping] and I was like, “Oh! I guess this is not how it works, and I guess this is why I had the [lapel] mic on! It makes a lot of sense now. Why would they double-mic me?”
Scobell went on to explain to LateNighter that on the Percy Jackson set they often wear wireless mic packs while also being followed by boom mics, so the redundancy didn’t rouse his curiosity.
All told, “I thought it was pretty fun,” he said of his late-night TV debut, which also saw him engaging in a fake sword fight with Fallon. “That was a crazy night. It went by so fast—a few seconds, and it was over!”
Percy Jackson and the Olympians streams its Season 2 finale this Wednesday, January 21; Season 3 was greenlit back in March 2025, and has two months of filming left.
