Power Rangers’ writer reflects on the merger of disputes: “It was such a mistake”

Decades later Powers Morphin Power Rangers First of all, he hit the radio waves in 1993, one of the key creatives behind the show is facing a casting choice that has long been the subject of the conversation of fans and critics.

In the new Hollywood demons Discovery Discovery documents, original Power Rangers Writer Tony Oliver He opens on what he now sees a clear misstep: launching a black actor like Black Ranger and an Asian actor as a yellow ranger. At the time, says Oliver, the implications were simply not on their radar.

“None of us [were] Thinking about stereotypes, “admits Oliver in the documentary, referring to the first casting process.” The black character [was] The black ranger and the Asian character The Yellow Ranger. ”

It was only after “my assistant made him notice a meeting one day” that the problem really hit him. “It was such a mistake,” he says.

The show was previewed in August 1993 on Fox Kids, with Walter Emanuel Jones like Zack Taylor (the original Black Ranger) e Thuy Trang Like Trini Kwan (the original yellow ranger). Oliver says that the roles were filled according to the personalities of the actors.

Jones “seemed to have the group of the group” while the yellow ranger had to be “the peaceful one, which tends to be the consciousness of the group”.

It is worth noting, adds Oliver, that Trag was not originally chosen as Trini. That role went for the first time to Dubois audriwhich left the production after a remuneration dispute. “Thuy was not our original yellow ranger,” he says, explaining that Trag has been modified in scenes that had already been shot.

Behind the scenes of the video camera included in the DOC shows the cast itself that recognize the perspective at that moment. “My name is Walter Jones, Sound Zack. I’m black and I play the black ranger, go to understand,” says Jones on the camera, clearly aware of the coincidence.

Co-creator Shuki LevyIn a previous interview with complex, he also said that the casting was not harmful or calculated, it came from a different cultural lens.

“It wasn’t intentional at all,” he said. “At that time, Haim [Saban] And I was new in this country. We did not grow in the same environment that exists in America as regards the color of the skin. We grew up in Israel, where being a color person is like being any type of color. It’s not something we talked about all the time. It wasn’t a big problem. “

My brothers and I had fun Power Rangers When we were growing, but this is something that never registered in my brain when I was a child. I just thought that the show, the action and all the characters were crazy!

Away: Entertainment Weekly