One of the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers actresses made shocking claims about how production treated cast members during the pilot in an all-new documentary.
Audri DuBois, who starred as Trini Kwan/Yellow Ranger in the 1993 pilot episode before being replaced by Thuy Trang, appears in the third episode of Investigation Discovery’s new docuseries, Hollywood Demons — titled the “Dark Side of the Power Rangers.”
According to DuBois, 57, a small budget and an even smaller window of time to get the pilot filmed, meant that an alleged medical emergency wasn’t a good enough reason to pause their shoot.
“When we were shooting the pilot, we’re out in the desert, it’s got to be 110 degrees and someone has a heat stroke,” she recalled in a preview published by TMZ.
“It was one of the bad guys in a wet suit with a rubber mask over their head with pinholes for the eyes and mouth. He’s flopping around like a fish,” DuBois explained, as archival photos of the masked actor were shown on the screen.
“Me and the others had come together and agreed, we were not gonna continue shooting until this guy gets in an ambulance and goes on,” DuBois continued.
She claimed production offered a monetary incentive to make sure no time was wasted.
“It was offered to anyone there that they would get $100 if they took that man’s wetsuit off and put it on, so that we could continue shooting,” she said. “And someone did.”
DuBois alleged, “The original man was in his underwear, in the dirt, flopping around, waiting for an ambulance. I was watching that going, ‘What?’ Like, ‘This is not okay. It’s scaring me.’ ”
“Basically, these contracts made it okay to work you to death, and they did,” the show’s head writer, Tony Oliver, claimed in the documentary, per Entertainment Weekly. “They’re not just sitting around saying lines. They’re jumping around, it’s very physical. They have to work out and train to maintain their characters. Our shoot days were much longer, we shot 12- to 14-hour days where unions were eight to 10, so it could be a little abusive to the actors.”
In a November 2018 Entertainment Weekly feature to celebrate the show’s 25th anniversary, the cast and co-creator Haim Saban discussed set conditions for the pilot.
“There was this pretty incredible fight scene out at Vasquez Rocks, and we actually had the stunt guys in wetsuits that they had it bad,” Austin St. John, who starred as the Red Ranger, told the outlet.
“It was boiling hot-hot, desert, 100-plus degree heat,” the actor, now 50, claimed. “One guy went down with heat exhaustion. I don’t know how we didn’t have more.”
St. John added, “Then, the command center [set] used to be freezing cold. Wearing nothing but spandex, we used to hold each other just to stay warm.”
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The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers also starred Amy Jo Johnson, Walter Emanuel Jones, David Yost, Austin St. John and Jason David Frank. New installments of the franchise continue to be produced.
Trang died in a car accident on Sept. 3, 2001. She was 27. Frank died by suicide on Nov. 19, 2022, at the age of 49.
Hollywood Demons, the “Dark Side of the Power Rangers,” premieres Monday, April 7, at 9 p.m. ET on ID and streaming on Max.
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