‘Power Rangers’ Writer Discusses ‘Mistake’ With Casting Black, Asian Stars In Series

A writer for the 1990s show “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” says the casting decisions made at the time were a “mistake.”

“None of us are thinking stereotypes,” former “Power Rangers” head writer Tony Oliver said during the newly-released episode of the docuseries “Hollywood Demons,” which is titled “Dark Side of the Power Rangers.”

The writer mentioned how “the black character [was] the Black Ranger and the Asian character [was] the Yellow Ranger.”

Oliver said his “assistant pointed it out in a meeting one day.”

“It was such a mistake,” he added, per Entertainment Weekly.

The popular kids series “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” debuted on Fox Kids in 1993. The head writer said the Black Ranger, Zack Taylor (Walter Emanuel Jones) “seemed to have the swagger of the group,” while the Yellow Ranger, Trini Kwan (Thuy Trang), was “the peaceful one, who tends to be the conscience of the group.”

He also noted that Trang was not initially cast as the Yellow Ranger but was added after the pilot was shot and their first pick, Audri DuBois, quit the show.

Series co-creator Shuki Levi said in a 2013 interview with Complex that casting Jones and Trang in those particular roles “wasn’t intentional at all.”

The documentary also aired camcorder footage from the set showing Jones saying, “My name’s Walter Jones, I play Zack. I’m black, and I play the Black Ranger — go figure.”

“At that time, [executive producer and co-creator Haim Saban] and I were new to this country. We didn’t grow up in the same environment that exists in America with regard to skin color. 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,” Levi said at the time.

Amy Jo Johnson, who played the Pink Power Ranger, said, “Walter Jones used to crack good-humored jokes about that. I think it’s funny if it was done unintentionally by the big bosses. But really? Come on. It wouldn’t happen today.”

“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,” actress Barbara Goodson, who played villain Rita Repulsa, told the outlet at the time. She also noted that the characters changed each season. 

“The girl who played the Yellow Ranger after Thuy wasn’t Asian, she was black. You could find something to scoff at everywhere,” Goodson said of the controversy.