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A writer for the popular 90s children’s show Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers has expressed regret over casting decisions made by the show. Specifically, the writer claims that casting an Asian woman to play the Yellow Ranger and a Black man to play the Black Ranger was a ‘mistake’.
During a recent episode of the Discovery docuseries Hollywood Demons — this one titled Dark Side of the Power Rangers — former head writer Tony Oliver claimed that no one on the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers realized that making the Yellow Ranger an Asian character and the Black Ranger a Black character was feeding into stereotypes.
The Yellow Ranger, Trini Kwan, was played by Thuy Trang, while the Black Ranger, Zack Taylor, was portrayed by Walter Emanuel Jones .Trang and Jones each ultimately appeared appeared in roughly 80 episodes in the series over the course of the first and second season before leaving the series due to contract and pay disputes.
“‘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,” according to Entertainment Weekly.
“‘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, the first entry in the Power Rangers franchise, first premiered on Fox Kids on August 28, 1993 and ran through November 1995. It was then succeeded by the series Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers in 1996.
Power Rangers remains in production today, with the 30th season, Power Rangers Cosmic Fury, airing on Netflix in 2023.
Content shared from brobible.com.