[YELLING]
Back off, fang face.
The good guys are here.
Get off our planet.
Because we're the Power Rangers.
And we're not backing down.
This is one of the most lasting entertainment
franchises of all time.
The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers exploded
into the '90s with Megazord-like force and, since then,
has become a key element in our cultural zeitgeist.
Over the last 28 years, fans of the Power Rangers
have been treated to three feature films,
over 60 comic books, and over 900 episodes of spin kicks
and giant robots with no signs of slowing down
at any time in the near future.
Despite almost three decades of success,
the Power Rangers got off to kind of a rocky start.
If you remember correctly, three of the original cast members
in the show's first season were replaced
before the second season started filming.
Austin St. John, Thuy Trang, and Walter Emanuel Jones, a.k.a.
the original red, yellow, and black Power Rangers.
And what happened there is a lesson in not only knowing
your value to a project, but also taking action
in order to get what you feel like you're worth.
The first season of The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
was a colossal success.
This is huge for a television show and often huge
for all the actors involved.
Success means more-- more episodes, more work, more fans,
and usually more money.
Oftentimes, when a show or a film is successful,
the actors involved are able to negotiate higher salaries
to continue their work.
A good example of this is Robert Downey Jr. in Iron Man.
He was paid a mere $500,000 to star in Iron Man One.
After the film's success, Robert Downey Jr.
was able to then negotiate a higher salary.
And by the time he was filming Infinity War,
he was estimated to have made about $75 million for the film.
With the success of Power Rangers,
it would only seem reasonable that the cast
was paid a fair wage based on the show's overnight success,
right?
Sadly, that was not the case.
To understand this better, we'll need
to take a look at the differences between union
and non-union productions.
The primary actors union for film and television
is called the Screen Actors Guild, or SAG.
Rather than make an attempt to fully explain union and labor
laws, we're going to kind of gloss over
some key details about the Screen Actors Guild.
Working on a union project comes with a lot of benefits.
First off, there are mandatory minimum wages.
Actors are paid overtime if a production lasts
longer than 10 hours in a day.
They are entitled to benefits.
And there are even bonus structures in place
for working with hazards like fire or explosives,
working with smoke, or even if performers are required
to get wet, among others.
There are a lot of bells and whistles
that come from a SAG contract.
But the point here is that a union like SAG
ensures that performers are protected
from exploitative working conditions
and compensated fairly for their time.
I hurt my leg.
No, you didn't.
Yes, I did.
Uh-oh.
I can't walk on it at all.
No way.
You're lying.
I am not lying to you.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was a non-union production,
meaning that nobody working on the show
was ever part of the Screen Actors Guild.
There are no guidelines for paying or protecting performers
or crew in a non-union project.
The pay could be $50 per day or even nothing at all.
Some non-union projects even cite exposure as the pay,
as if actors could pay their bills with exposure.
The bottom line here is that by switching production
to non-union status, the production company
behind Power Rangers, Saban Entertainment,
was able to circumvent some of the most costly aspects
of making a television show, namely paying their performers.
The cast of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
were paid $600 per week.
Given that shoots would often run long
and were physically demanding, this wage
is almost criminally low.
Saban took even further advantage
of that non-union status and didn't
offer any royalties for episodes in syndication
for any members of the cast.
The actors that were hired were all
pretty new to the film television business.
Austin St. John was a martial arts student and still
in high school when he got cast.
Thuy Trang was a 20-year-old student of Shaolin Kung
Fu entering her first role.
Amy Jo Johnson, who played Kimberly, the Pink Ranger,
landed the role one month into her foray into acting.
Blue Ranger, David Yost was cast after only
auditioning for three months.
The point here is that these performers
were inexperienced young actors being
offered a role in a television show for the first time.
It's doubtful that they were thinking
about the subtle nuances of contract negotiations
when they accepted.
As we stated earlier, the first season of Mighty Morphin Power
Rangers was a huge success.
The actors were very, very aware of the show's exploding
popularity.
And as they watched the flood of merchandise sales
grow to an overwhelming degree--
This is totally terrific.
They grew frustrated that they still
were making $600 per week.
According to some of the cast members,
there may have been an attempt to get the principal ensemble
to push the Saban Entertainment into creating a union
production.
But those talks fell through.
After that happened, Austin St. John, Thuy Trang,
and Walter Emanuel Jones stopped showing up to voice
over sessions in protest over their low wages.
There were threats of leaving.
And this battle of attrition went about as far
as it could possibly go.
There's that age old saying, the squeaky wheel
gets the most grease.
Well, sometimes if the wheel is too squeaky,
it gets replaced entirely.
That's what happened to these three performers.
Austin St. John was fired and replaced
with the new Red Ranger, Rocky, played by Steve Cardenas.
Walter Emanuel Jones was replaced
with Johnny Yong Bosch as the new Black Ranger, Adam Park.
And Thuy Trang was replaced with Karen Ashley, the new Yellow
Ranger, Aisha.
I present to you the new Power Rangers.
We will now start the ceremony to transfer power
from Jason, Zack, and Trini to Rocky, Adam, and Aisha.
Whoa.
Just like that, it was over, and the message
was sent to the rest of the cast that you can and will
be replaced if necessary.
After all, these characters spent over half
of every episode inside of a dinosaur helmet that
disguised their identity.
So the rationale was likely that it didn't really
matter who was in the suit.
A few of the other cast members dropped off pretty quickly
after those three got fired.
Amy Jo Johnson left the show in the middle of season two
due to safety concerns.
She was almost set on fire during the production of Mighty
Morphin Power Rangers The Movie and was electrocuted
during the filming of 1997's Turbo, A Power Rangers
Movie, things that likely wouldn't have
happened on a union project.
David Yost hung in there until Power Rangers Zeo,
despite being bullied on set due to his sexuality.
But that's for a whole separate episode.
Since then, there have been over 20 different actors
to play every different Power Ranger.
In fact, the swapping of cast members
has become an expected part of the Power Rangers universe.
They took the initial firing of those first three Power Rangers
and effectively made it into a canonical element of the show.
Zordon, what are we going to do without a Pink Ranger?
There is somebody out there that can take my place.
Hi, everyone.
The power's all yours now.
It continues to serve the show well in terms
of keeping things fresh and also eliminates
any leverage that a cast member might
be able to use against the production company.
In 2018, after Hasbro acquired Power Rangers from Saban,
it was announced that the show was moving toward hiring union
performers.
But still, that's almost 25 years
of getting away with dramatically
underpaying your performers.
It's part of the reason that there
is a necessity for agents, managers, and labor unions
in the entertainment industry.
A lot of this comes down to what is in the writing.
Non-union contracts can have tricky language.
And in them, performers may sign their rights to overtime away.
They may waive their rights to getting paid for rehearsals
and not even know it.
Whatever the case may be, your personal value
isn't determined by a contract or a membership
to a fancy union or anything like that.
Your personal value is determined by you
and you alone.
In the case of the Power Rangers,
these performers felt like they were worth more than $600
per week, made a stand, and ultimately were cut loose.
But just because they were fired doesn't diminish their value
despite getting replaced on the show.
Austin St. John and Walter Emanuel Jones
are still making appearances at conventions across the nation.
Amy Jo Johnson has found success as a filmmaker.
She successfully crowdfunded her first feature film, The Space
Between, in 2017.
David Yost started his own clothing company back in Texas.
Heck, even the voice of Alpha, Richard Horvitz,
has gone to become a voiceover legend as the voice of Zim
in Nickelodeon's Invader Zim.
In an industry that is constantly
taking advantage of its performers,
sometimes the only person you can really trust is yourself.
And that's it for today's episode of Nerdstalgic.
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[MUSIC PLAYING]