Power Rangers Writer Says Casting Black and Asian Actors as Black Ranger and Yellow Ranger Was ‘Such a Mistake’

One of the key creative minds behind Mighty Morphin Power Rangers is owning up to a pair of casting choices widely decried as racially insensitive.

While crafting the first season of the children’s superhero crime-fighting series, “None of us are thinking stereotypes,” said former Power Rangers head writer Tony Oliver, speaking on “Dark Side of the Power Rangers,” the latest episode of Investigation Discovery‘s new docuseries, Hollywood Demons.

That’s why he says that the series was able to get all the way to air — and run for two seasons — with “the Black character the Black Ranger and the Asian character the Yellow Ranger.” Oliver says it took “my assistant who pointed it out in a meeting one day” to realize the glaring, stereotype-driven casting at the heart of the show. “It was such a mistake,” he reflected.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers premiered on Fox Kids in August 1993. Zack Taylor (Walter Emanuel Jones) was the first Black Ranger, who “seemed to have the swagger of the group,” according to Oliver. He described Trini Kwan (Thuy Trang), the first Yellow Ranger, as “the peaceful one, who tends to be the conscience of the group.”

Oliver pointed out that “Thuy was not our original Yellow Ranger.” The first actress cast in that role, Audri Dubois, quit the show following a pay dispute after shooting the pilot. Trang was recast and edited into the pilot that aired in 1993.

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