‘Power Rangers’ actor visiting east Idaho comic book stores this weekend
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IDAHO FALLS — Actor Jason Faunt has battled a lot of evildoers throughout his twenty-plus-year career. But this weekend, Faunt will take a break from kicking bad guy booty to drop in on east Idaho and visit local fans.
Faunt, who is best known for playing Wesley Collins, the Red Time Force Ranger in “Power Rangers Time Force,” will be appearing at Captain Bengal’s Comic Cove in Pocatello this Friday afternoon starting at 5 p.m. Faunt will also be stopping by Inner Circle Comics and Games in Idaho Falls on Saturday, Oct. 1 beginning at noon.
“This is probably my 28th state in the past year-and-a-half or two years,” Faunt told EastIdahoNews.com. “Idaho has been on my to-do list that I’ve been wanting to see and I’m finally getting up there.”
Faunt started out as an athlete before acting became his craft.
“I went to college on a baseball scholarship,” said Faunt. “I had dreams to be a Major League baseball player. After college ball, I played pro ball briefly and definitely hit my max with where I was in baseball.”
“Since seeing the movie ‘Risky Business with Tom Cruise when I was a sophomore in high school, I thought ‘when I’m done playing baseball, I’m going to move to Hollywood and try to be an actor,’” he continued. “After (my baseball team) released me, I packed my bags and headed out to Hollywood with $1500 to my name. I just winged it, jumped into acting class, pinned my ears back and learned and slowly found my way in Hollywood.”
Faunt worked hard and did a lot of different projects, from soap operas to commercials. He auditioned for many different roles, including “Power Rangers.”
“You read for a lot of stuff,” Faunt said. “I read for and almost got a role on ‘Wedding Crashers’ and there’s a lot of big films that I read for and just didn’t get. (‘Power Rangers’) was just an audition that went well.”
Faunt said his role on “Power Rangers” was similar to a lot of superheroes and their alter egos who populate contemporary movie and TV screens.
“If you’re not familiar with ‘Power Rangers’ it’s very similar to ‘Spider-Man,’” he said. “I’m Peter Parker, so I’m the face guy when the ‘bad guys’ come, we morph into Rangers and stunt guys do all the fighting in the suits. After the fighting, he morphs back to my character and you have the love story and the issues with that.”
Playing Wesley Collins won Faunt legions of fans around the world, but that’s not the only big pop culture phenomenon he’s been a part of. Faunt also does the motion capture work for the character of Leon Kennedy in video game “Resident Evil 6” and the animated film “Resident Evil – Vendetta.”
Faunt said performing for motion capture cameras is much different than acting for live-action TV or film.
“Live action stuff is more about what going on internally,” Faunt said. “It’s more about stillness. It’s about knowing what you’re doing and not showing what you’re doing. Whereas MOCAP has to be a bit bigger. What I thought was fascinating playing a character like Leon, is that in a video game, your character has to keep moving or he looks dead. So all those cutaway scenes are done by actors and it’s like live theater. We play an entire scene out, so you have to keep moving, whether it’s breathing hard or shifting your weight or moving your head.”
Faunt is excited to get a chance to come out and meet fans while doing something to support local comic book stores.
“When COVID started, (actors) couldn’t do comic-cons, we couldn’t do appearances, I couldn’t film in L.A, we were very shut down and we couldn’t make a living,” he said. “So we thought mom-and-pop comic book stores are really struggling during this time. So myself and (fellow ‘Power Rangers’ actor) Jason David Frank thought, what if we traveled the country on our own dime to help the mom-and-pop shops during this time?”
“Obviously, things have gotten back to normal, but this allows fans who can’t afford to get to a comic-con to come in and meet me,” he added. “It’s been great for the community, it’s been great for the comic book stores, and that’s the reason we started doing it.”
You can meet Jason Faunt this Friday, Sept. 30 at Captain Bengal’s Comic Cove in Pocatello starting at 5 p.m. and Saturday, Oct. 1 at Inner Circle Comics and Games in Idaho Falls starting at noon. Admission is free if you just want to come in and say “Hi.” There will also be items available for purchase if you’d like an autograph.