When I was a little kid in New Zealand, one of my absolute favourite shows was Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I would sit in front of the TV after school enthralled by the colours, the karate and the deafening ’90s guitars. It was a weird show frankly; a bunch of American teens used magical coins to transform into spandex-clad Deliveroo drivers and fight rubber monsters sent down from the moon. I adored it. I wanted to be a Power Ranger more than anything. And then a few years later I got my wish.
When I was 18 I was cast as the Yellow Ranger in the 14th season of Power Rangers. It was a big surprise, partly because I had no idea the show was even still going, let alone that it was being filmed in my own backyard. Power Rangers was banned from our TVs during the ’90s for being ‘too violent’, then ironically production moved to New Zealand in the early 2000s to make more. Take that, concerned parents!
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But it was also unexpected because the Power Rangers I remembered were all muscled Americans with granite jawlines and sick martial arts skills. I was a scrawny ginger boy who had spent high school studying improv and still had one of my baby teeth. Surely I wasn’t Power Ranger material? It was then explained to me that in this season, one of the Power Rangers was going to be a little nerdy guy who was obsessed with fantasy and magic. Turns out I was born to play the role!
Power Rangers Mystic Force (the 14th season was basically Power Rangers meets Harry Potter) filmed in Auckland during 2005. As far as I was concerned I had hit the big time. I lived in a hotel and got chauffeured around the city, just like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone 2!
On set I had a chair with my name on it and someone would bring me hot chocolates whenever I asked, just like Macaulay Culkin on the set of Home Alone 2, probably!
Filming the show was a blur. One day we would be flying on a green screen dragon, the next we would be fighting a venus flytrap DJ that turned people into vampires, the next we would be trying to reverse an evil wish that had drained all the colour out of the world. Power Rangers is filmed at a fast pace, and all the footage of robots fighting is just bought from the Japanese version of the show. As a result a lot of the time we honestly had no idea what was going on. I don’t know how good a performance I gave, but I did get really good at jumping in the air in slow motion while an enormous fireball exploded behind me.