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USA Today
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
'Power Rangers' writer calls casting Black, Asian actors as Black and Yellow Rangers a 'mistake'
'Power Rangers' writer calls casting Black, Asian actors as Black and Yellow Rangers a 'mistake' Show Caption Hide Caption Victoria Justice breaks silence on 'Quiet On Set' and Dan Schneider Victoria Justice broke her silence on 'Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV', saying that former producer Dan Schneider owes her an apology. unbranded - Entertainment Decades after casting decisions for the "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" sparked outrage, head writer Tony Oliver has some regrets. The show, which premiered in 1993 and spawned a pop culture phenomenon, cast a Black actor in the role of the black Power Ranger and an Asian actor as the Yellow Ranger. The decision was widely viewed as insensitive and, in a new documentary, Oliver calls it a "mistake." "None of us are thinking stereotypes," he said in an interview for "Dark Side of the Power Rangers," the latest episode of the Investigation Discovery documentary "Hollywood Demons." In fact, he revealed, it took one of his assistants pointing out the stereotype in a meeting for him to realize the optics of it. Netflix's 'Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers reunion special is millennial nostalgia done right While the show later established a pattern of swapping out actors for each color Ranger season to season, the mark made by the original casting was indelible. Walter Emanuel Jones, who played the original Black Ranger, even joked about the choice in behind-the-scenes footage from the show. "My name's Walter Jones, I play Zack. I'm Black, and I play the black Ranger — go figure," he says in a clip from the "Dark Side of the Power Rangers." The original Yellow Ranger was played by Thuy Trang. "It was such a mistake," Oliver said in the documentary, covering his face slightly and shaking his head. "But Thuy was not our original Yellow Ranger," he revealed. "It was actually Audri DuBois. She was the one who did the pilot episode. Don't know why she left. You'll have to ask her." DuBois, who was interviewed for the episode, told producers she exited over a pay dispute when the studio refused to give her enough money per episode to make a living and finance her move from Arizona. "I try to be tough about it," she said through tears. "It is what it is, you know." DuBois was not the only star displeased with their "Power Rangers" paycheck. Stunt coordinator Jeff Pruitt also recalled in the episode an impassioned speech Trang gave in front of network executives advocating for a fairer shake. "The owners of the stations all came," Pruitt said. "Rupert Murdoch came, they brought out the Power Rangers. Thuy went up to the microphone and started reading this speech. How rotten Fox was for not paying them more money, and how they all deserved more money … the station owners were just looking like, 'What is this?' "When it was over, she walked backstage, and she just ran to me and grabbed me and started crying, and said, 'What did I do? Oh god, what did I do?'" he recalled. "She regretted it instantly, but it was kind of too late." Not long after the speech, Trang, along with Jones and Austin St. John, who played the Red Power Ranger, were fired and replaced, the episode reveals, implying they were axed in part because they advocated for better pay. While the show was taking off in its second season and toy sales began to boom, the actors saw very little of that economic boon, making little enough to need second jobs, the documentary claims. "Everybody got scared by cutting off three of the rangers," Oliver said. "Cutting them out, it sent a message to everybody, 'Don't even try it. We'll just replace you like that. We don't care." While the new set of Rangers played less into racial stereotypes, the original casting decision would not soon be forgotten. In an interview with Complex in 2013, the show's writer and director Shukli Levy said the choice was not intentional. Why Millennials are obsessed with 'Power Rangers' "At that time, (show creator Haim Saban) and I were new to this country. We didn't grow up in the same environment that exists in America with regards to skin color," he told the outlet. "We grew up in Israel, where being a Black person is like being any kind of color. It's not something we talked about all the time. It wasn't a big issue. And that's also how I felt in Paris, where we lived for seven years before coming here." Barbara Goodson, who played Rita Repulsa on the show, defended the decision to Complex at the time, characterizing it as a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of situation. "If they didn't do it, people would say, 'Well, why didn't they make the Black Ranger a Black Ranger?' You could get criticized either way," she said. "The girl who played the Yellow Ranger after Thuy wasn't Asian, she was Black. You could find something to scoff at everywhere."
Yahoo
05-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Power Rangers' Actress Recalls Actor Had Heatstroke During Pilot. What She Alleges Happened Next Is Shocking
One of the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers actresses made shocking claims about how production treated cast members during the pilot in an all-new documentary. Audri DuBois, who starred as Trini Kwan/Yellow Ranger in the 1993 pilot episode before being replaced by Thuy Trang, appears in the third episode of Investigation Discovery's new docuseries, Hollywood Demons — titled the "Dark Side of the Power Rangers." According to DuBois, 57, a small budget and an even smaller window of time to get the pilot filmed, meant that an alleged medical emergency wasn't a good enough reason to pause their shoot. "When we were shooting the pilot, we're out in the desert, it's got to be 110 degrees and someone has a heat stroke," she recalled in a preview published by TMZ. "It was one of the bad guys in a wet suit with a rubber mask over their head with pinholes for the eyes and mouth. He's flopping around like a fish,' DuBois explained, as archival photos of the masked actor were shown on the screen. Related: The Cast of 'Mighty Morphin Power Rangers': Where Are They Now? 'Me and the others had come together and agreed, we were not gonna continue shooting until this guy gets in an ambulance and goes on,' DuBois continued. She claimed production offered a monetary incentive to make sure no time was wasted. 'It was offered to anyone there that they would get $100 if they took that man's wetsuit off and put it on, so that we could continue shooting,' she said. 'And someone did.' DuBois alleged, 'The original man was in his underwear, in the dirt, flopping around, waiting for an ambulance. I was watching that going, 'What?' Like, 'This is not okay. It's scaring me.' ' "Basically, these contracts made it okay to work you to death, and they did," the show's head writer, Tony Oliver, claimed in the documentary, per Entertainment Weekly. "They're not just sitting around saying lines. They're jumping around, it's very physical. They have to work out and train to maintain their characters. Our shoot days were much longer, we shot 12- to 14-hour days where unions were eight to 10, so it could be a little abusive to the actors." Related: Go, Go, 'Power Rangers' ! Find Out Which Original Stars Will Reunite for 30th Anniversary Special on Netflix In a November 2018 Entertainment Weekly feature to celebrate the show's 25th anniversary, the cast and co-creator Haim Saban discussed set conditions for the pilot. 'There was this pretty incredible fight scene out at Vasquez Rocks, and we actually had the stunt guys in wetsuits that they had it bad,' Austin St. John, who starred as the Red Ranger, told the outlet. 'It was boiling hot-hot, desert, 100-plus degree heat,' the actor, now 50, claimed. 'One guy went down with heat exhaustion. I don't know how we didn't have more.' St. John added, 'Then, the command center [set] used to be freezing cold. Wearing nothing but spandex, we used to hold each other just to stay warm." Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers also starred Amy Jo Johnson, Walter Emanuel Jones, David Yost, Austin St. John and Jason David Frank. New installments of the franchise continue to be produced. Trang died in a car accident on Sept. 3, 2001. She was 27. Frank died by suicide on Nov. 19, 2022, at the age of 49. Hollywood Demons, the "Dark Side of the Power Rangers," premieres Monday, April 7, at 9 p.m. ET on ID and streaming on Max. Read the original article on People
