Danica Davidson
April 14, 2023 
It won’t be much longer before the special Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always hits Netflix on April 19. According to an article with the Guardian where several members of the cast were interviewed, this special never would have happened if it weren’t for David Yost, the actor who plays the original Blue Ranger.
Yost’s idea was an eight-part miniseries and he even had some scripts written, though Netflix passed on those for legal reasons. “I don’t want to use the word ‘consolation’,” Yost remarked, “but [Netflix] said: ‘We can’t do that right now – we can create this special.’ It was a lot of work on their part to get from there to a shooting script. I gave my input and I think it turned out pretty good.”
One of the reasons he was interested in working on Power Rangers again is because the franchise is now owned by Hasbro, which Yost says treats the talent better than Saban Entertainment, the original company, did.
“When we originally filmed, we didn’t have a lot of protections, we didn’t have health insurance,” he recalled. “I, being a young dumb Hollywood kid, got into a bar fight and got my nose broken in season one, so I’m walking around with a broken nose. I think at that point [Saban] realized ‘we should maybe give these kids a stipend, a certain amount of money that they can apply to getting health insurance’. That instance woke them up, but unfortunately never woke them up to deal with the union.”
Walter Emanuel Jones, who plays the original Black Ranger, also commented, “I could have worked the window at McDonald’s and probably made the same money the first season.”
Still, there was plenty of fun to be had on the original set as well. Jason Narvy, who played the character Skull, also helped out as an assistant director. He remembered a particular example of this: “I’m in 18th-century British military regalia, there’s a stunt guy dressed as a rat and ready to be hurled across a wire rig by an air cannon. I wave my sword to yell: ‘Action!’ That’s, like, Monty Python stuff.”
Source: The Guardian
____
Danica Davidson is the author of the bestselling Manga Art for Beginners with artist Melanie Westin, plus its sequel, Manga Art for Everyone, and the first-of-its-kind manga chalk book Chalk Art Manga, both illustrated by professional Japanese mangaka Rena Saiya. Check out her other comics and books at www.danicadavidson.com.
Related Posts
