David Yost

Reportedly three months after landing in Los Angeles, the Iowa gymnast with two state championships walked into an audition for a low-budget show about teenagers fighting aliens in spandex. David Yost landed the Blue Ranger role on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, playing Billy Cranston, the group's resident nerd. He became the only original cast member to appear in every single episode across three seasons, long after everyone else had moved on. The character survived by being the last one standing.

His exit from the show was so abrupt the producers used archive footage and an uncredited voice actor to cover his last episode. He'd walked off mid-production after years of anti-gay slurs from crew and producers. What followed was conversion therapy, a breakdown, five weeks in a psychiatric hospital, and a year in Mexico. His 2010 public coming out shifted the public story from disappearing cast member to LGBTQ advocate. The 2023 Netflix anniversary special brought him back, thirty years on and on his own terms.

Before anyone knew him as the Blue Ranger, he was a competitive gymnast who won state titles in Iowa and Montana. In 1996, he wrote a script called Billy's Transformation, which producers rejected for being too dark, which sits differently now that the full story is public. He co-founded Affirmative Clothing in 2016, named after Billy's signature catchphrase. His Instagram bio lists actor, producer, writer, and the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.