Power Rangers star details shocking on-set conditions making pilot: 'It's scaring me'

The 1993 pilot episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers kicked off a multimillion-dollar media franchise that remains enduringly popular with children, but things were much darker behind the scenes.

Several members of the cast and crew who participated in the 1992 shoot recalled the shocking working conditions on "Dark Side of the Power Rangers," the third episode of Investigation Discovery's new docuseries, Hollywood Demons.

"Basically, these contacts made it okay to work you to death, and they did," said Tony Oliver, who was the show's head writer. Oliver said of the original core cast — Amy Jo Johnson, David Yost, Austin St. John, Walter Emanuel Jones, and Audri Dubois — "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."

Dubois says she witnessed that abuse first hand when production moved to a sweltering desert location for a battle scene.

"When we're shooting the pilot, we're out in the desert — it's got to be 110 degrees — and someone has heat stroke," Dubois recalled. "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, who was recast by Thuy Trang when the partially reshot pilot finally aired in 1993, remembered, "Me and the others had come together and agreed we were not going to continue shooting until this guy gets in an ambulance." But "that's really hard to do when you're shooting the pilot episode," Oliver explained. "We had this much money for the pilot," he said, indicating a tiny amount with his fingers.

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There was nothing on TV at the time like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, a high-octane children's series about crimefighting superheroes that was not just based on, but actually directly incorporated stock footage from the Japanese TV series Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger. The Fox network took a gamble on the series when it programmed Power Rangers on its popular Fox Kids block in the summer of 1993. So the Power Rangers crew pushed hard to wrap the important pilot episode within budget, which was too hard, according to Dubois.

She recounted that "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, and someone did. The original then was in his underwear in the dirt, flopping around waiting for an ambulance."

"I was watching that going, 'What? This is not okay. It's scaring me,'" Dubois said.

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The pilot episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was eventually titled "Day of the Dumpster" and premiered on Aug. 28, 1993, on Fox Kids. Dubois claims that a pay dispute led to her being fired and replaced by the Vietnamese-American actress Thuy Trang, who was herself fired the following season.

Some version of Power Rangers has been consistently on air since then, across five networks, spanning nearly 1,000 episodes, and featuring three dozen actors playing the core team of rangers. Last month, Disney+ announced they've taken the TV franchise over from Netflix and will produce a 31st season of the series.

"Dark Side of the Power Rangers," the third episode of Investigation Discovery's new series Hollywood Demons, premieres Monday, April 7, airing from 9-11 p.m. ET on ID and streaming on Max.