'Power Rangers' writer calls casting Black, Asian actors as Black and Yellow Rangers a 'mistake'
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.
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.
"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."