Two weeks ago at Great Philadelphia Comic Con, Scoop chatted with Power Rangers actress Nakia Burrise. She pointed out her favorite episodes, compared the series, and talked about working on The Order with other Power Rangers actors and actresses.
Scoop: How has the weekend been so far?
Nakia Burrise (NB): It’s been amazing. Really nice. I’ve had a great time, meeting wonderful fans. It’s been really good to be able to discuss the new movie that just came out. I love hearing the fans’ take on the movie. Some have liked it, but I’ve heard quite a bit that don’t like it because it’s not that similar to the original series. So, that’s been a lot of fun to hear about.
Scoop: What did you think of the new movie? Have you seen it?
NB: Yes, I actually liked it. There were some parts that I didn’t like, but the overall story, I thought was really good. I liked that you could identify with each character. I do wish they would’ve gotten to the action a little bit quicker. But, overall I thought it was a good movie.
Scoop: In the Power Rangers career that you had, were there any certain episodes or story arcs that were your favorites, that you loved the most?
NB: When I was on Zeo – I did Zeo and Turbo – Zeo, I loved because of the storylines they gave Tanya. Because I was a new character, I felt like there were more episodes that catered to my character. There was one episode called, “A Song Sung Yellow,” and that, pretty much, came about by the producers hearing me sing inside of my dressing room. So, they decided to write an episode about it. Tanya gets to make a music video, record an album, and then she has to decide if she’s going to continue to save the world as Tanya the Yellow Power Ranger, or if she’s going to take this record deal, and of course, she decides to continue to save the world. That was a lot of fun.
And then there was another episode that I really enjoyed with Jason David Frank where we were hit with a spell, and of course, it involved singing again. This time it was opera singing. But we couldn’t turn it off, so every single time we had something to say it came out in song. We loved it so much that even when it was cut we were by craft service singing about the food! It was a lot of fun.
Scoop: I think I remember outtakes at the end of you two belting out dialogue and cracking up.
NB: Yes! Jason had this little ponytail and it would swing when he sang – oh, it was so much fun, so funny.
Scoop: Did you have a favorite series between Zeo and Turbo?
NB: I love them both for different reasons. Again, I loved Zeo because I had more storylines and I loved Turbo because we got to fight. In Zeo I didn’t get to fight – those were stunt guys. I loved the fighting, that was a lot of fun.
Scoop: Were there any complicated stunts you were particularly proud of?
NB: Well, it did not make the cut. There were a bunch of different fights that we did for the movie, originally, all of us. We ended up halfway through the movie and the director ended up being replaced. So, all of that was edited out of the movie. So we had to do new fights, but I really loved the original fights that we had. They were pretty complex and they looked so, like, bad-butt.
Scoop: Tell me about your character in The Order. Can you give me a bit of info?
NB: I will say that she’s not someone you want to mess with. She handles her business. She’s kind of second in command. She follows her orders, and they come to her because they know that she’s going to get things done. Word.
Scoop: Was it fun getting back together with so many different actors from the Power Rangers franchise?
NB: It was like Disneyland, every day. Seriously. The great thing about it is, because there are Rangers from so many different seasons, I didn’t get a chance to work with all of those Rangers – even from Mighty Morphin, I didn’t get to work with Austin or Walter or Karan. All of us being on set together, there was so much stuff happening, it was great. It was only three days for that part, but obviously, when we do the movie it’ll be much longer, but yeah, it was like Disneyland.
