Latest news with #YellowRanger
The Hill
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hill
‘Power Rangers' actor splits with writer, says casting a ‘milestone'
Walter Emanual Jones, the actor best known for his role as the Black Power Ranger in the 1990s 'Mighty Morphin Power Rangers,' has rejected the notion that casting a Black actor in the role was a mistake. 'While some choose to seek out the negative, I've always believed in focusing on the positive,' Jones wrote on Instagram this week. 'I understand the impulse to address what might be seen as cultural insensitivity, but calling it a 'mistake' would dismiss the impact it had on countless people around the world who found inspiration and representation in TV's first Black superhero — morphin' into none other than the Black Power Ranger!' Jones's comments follow remarks from Tony Oliver, a writer from the show, who said he regretted having a Black actor play the role of a Black Ranger and an Asian actor — Thuy Trang — play the Yellow Ranger. In an interview for investigation discovery's for 'Dark Side of the Power Rangers,' Oliver said he had never noticed the stereotype until his assistant pointed it out to him. 'It was such a mistake,' Oliver said. Jones himself had joked about the casting of a Black actor as the Black Power Ranger, according to footage from the documentary. 'My name's Walter Jones, I play Zack. I'm Black, and I play the black Ranger — go figure,' Jones said in the clip. The show was a pop culture phenomenon for many growing up in the 90s, so much so that Jones reunited with castmates for a 30th anniversary reunion special. 'It wasn't a mistake; it was a milestone. It was an honor,' Jones said in his Instagram post.
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
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Black Ranger Walter Emanuel Jones reacts to writer calling Black and Yellow Power Rangers casting 'a mistake'
For Walter Emanuel Jones, suiting up as Black Ranger in the mega hit Power Rangers franchise was nothing short of an honor. The actor responded to headline-making comments from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers writer Tony Oliver, who recently expressed regret over the perceived stereotypical casting of Black and Asian actors to play Black Ranger and Yellow Ranger — namely, Jones as Zack Taylor/Black Ranger and the late Thuy Trang as Trini Kwan/Yellow Ranger. Sharing screenshots of all the headlines on Oliver's comments on Instagram, Jones challenged the notion that it was culturally insensitive and clarified that he considers it a milestone of its era."While some choose to seek out the negative, I've always believed in focusing on the positive," Jones wrote. "I understand the impulse to address what might be seen as cultural insensitivity, but calling it a 'mistake' would dismiss the impact it had on countless people around the world who found inspiration and representation in TV's first Black superhero — morphin' into none other than the Black Power Ranger! It wasn't a mistake; it was a milestone. It was an honor." Jones made his Black Ranger debut on Fox Kids' Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in 1993 and appeared across all two seasons. He recently reprised the role alongside his original costars, including Amy Jo Johnson and David Yost, in Netflix's 30th anniversary reunion special feature Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always. Oliver and more creatives looked back on the crafting of the show and the casting in the Power Rangers episode of Investigation Discovery's new docuseries, Hollywood Demons. "None of us are thinking stereotypes," Oliver, the program's former head writer, said in the episode of Jones and Trang's casting, adding that it was his assistant who pointed out the potentially problematic nature of it during a meeting one day. "It was such a mistake." Jones himself also recently discussed the topic during an appearance on Jim Cummings' Toon'd In! podcast last month. "Me being in a black suit never bothered me," Jones said, sharing that he had been floated for the blue and red suits as well but the characters did not quite fit him. "Black was what I wanted to wear." He also echoed a tidbit shared by Oliver in the docuseries, that Latina actress Audri Dubois had been cast as Yellow Ranger in the pilot but departed the show due to a pay dispute. Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
The Independent
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Power Rangers writer says casting Black and Asian actors as Black and Yellow Rangers was ‘mistake'
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers writer Tony Oliver has said it was 'such a mistake' to cast a Black actor to play the Black Ranger and an Asian actor to play the Yellow Ranger on the first two seasons of the 1990s superhero show. The series, which debuted in 1993, starred Walter Emanuel Jones as Zack Taylor/Black Ranger and Thuy Trang as Trini Kwan/Yellow Ranger. He continued: "It was my assistant who pointed it out in a meeting one day, that we had made the Black character the Black Ranger and the Asian character the Yellow Ranger. It was such a mistake.' Oliver went on to point out that 'Thuy was not our original Yellow Ranger.' In the original pilot for the series, the Yellow Ranger was played by Audri Dubois, who quit the show following a pay dispute. Trang was added to the cast and edited into the pilot before it aired. Behind-the-scenes footage included in 'Dark Side of the Power Rangers' shows that the cast, if not the writers, were aware of the stereotypes at play. In one scene, Jones says to the camera: 'My name's Walter Jones, I play Zack. I'm Black, and I play the Black Ranger. Go figure.' When the series was rebooted as a movie in 2017, the characters were recast. A Black actor, RJ Cyler, played the Blue Ranger while an Asian actor, Ludi Lin, played the Black Ranger. Latin pop star Becky G played the Yellow Ranger. However, Writing for The Independent at the time, Kaan K said: 'As a queer person who grew up in a 'straight' culture, you can imagine my excitement when I read online that the newest Yellow Power Ranger was going to be gay... 'I went to the cinema with high hopes – the director called the Yellow Ranger's 'coming-out' scene 'pivotal', after all. Finally there would be a cute girl who the Yellow Ranger falls for, I thought, just like there have been so many heterosexual romances in Power Rangers in the past. 'So you can imagine my disappointment when her 'queerness' was left so ambiguous that you could have easily left the cinema thinking she was straight.'
