While most people come out of education with a hospitality job and little-to-no idea about what on earth to do next, at 18 years young Nic Sampson became .
That’s right: he was a live-action superhero while his schoolmates looked on in awe from their stuffy classrooms.
Yes, he did occasionally have to wear the latex. No, it was not comfortable. And every time you see a Power Ranger in a helmet, that’s a stunt double. Sorry.
Since he portrayed Chip Thorn, the Yellow Mystic Ranger in Power Rangers Mystic Force which aired in , the New Zealand actor has gone on to star in sketch show Funny Girls and detective drama The Brokenwood Mysteries.
Now 37, Nic looks back with Metro.co.uk as he takes his show titled Yellow Power Ranger to all about his bizarre first job on the 14th season, which has enjoyed 30 years of colour-coded joy.
‘It’s not the typical after-school job,’ he laughs. ‘I lived in Wellington, and then I got cast in the show, and it was filmed in Auckland. So I moved up to live in a hotel for about six months while we filmed the show.’
While his starring role was admittedly incredibly cool to his peers – and to him – Nic didn’t feel he fully fit the superhero mould.
‘I wasn’t like what you would imagine Power Ranger material to be like at that point,’ he admits.
‘I was big into improv comedy, and I still had one of my baby teeth, but they wanted one of the Power Rangers to be a kind of nerdy, fantasy-loving kid, which was kind of perfect for me.
‘So it just really dovetailed very nicely. I got to be a Power Ranger alongside very beautiful, attractive, fit Australians and just kind of be there as well. It was great.’
It was almost too good for fresh-faced Nic, who recalls not being so young to the world he couldn’t cook for himself, so blew all his acting money on the hotel he and the fellow Rangers were staying at.
‘I remember the first time I tried to cook a meal for myself. I think I made tinned spaghetti, and I put eggs in it. It was just an awful meal. I was like, “Maybe I’ll just order room service.”
‘My parents warned me, “Make sure you save your money while you’re working on this show.” And I was like, “Well, I don’t think I’ll ever have to work again.”
‘By the end of the season, I had spent most of my Power Rangers money on the hotel,’ he chuckles.
‘It was this very brief period of living the high life, but it was a crazy time,’ Nic adds, explaining that it set him a false expectation for what life in the arts would be like.
‘I sort of lived off the money for a while, and then I got a job at a bakery, and having to get up really early to go do that was definitely a humbling experience,’ he says.
‘The Power Rangers had kind of made me into a very particular type of actor, which was a Power-Rangery actor. So I would go and audition for these quite serious roles and be a little bit too big, and probably doing too many kicks or something.’
How to see Nic Sampson's show
Nic Sampson: Yellow Power Ranger is at the Edinburgh Fringe from August 8 – 16, and 18 – 25 at Venue 139 Assembly Roxy at 5.45pm.
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Without offers flooding in from all angles like he thought they would, Nic began to write – which led him to comedy and an Edinburgh Fringe show in 2024.
‘It’s a character show,’ he explains. ‘The premise is it’s me at a comic convention trying to organise a reunion of the whole cast to a bunch of fans of the show.’
It is going to be very silly, I’m assured.
Chatting a few weeks before the Fringe, Nic could really do with a Power Ranger of his own to help him out. He’s nervous, you see.
‘I’m big picture excited and day to day nervous,’ he says. ‘In the hours that lead up to the show, I sort of wish I would get, like, just a little bit hit by a car, just slightly, you know, to the point where I’d have to cancel the show.
‘I wouldn’t mind it.’
