These Kansas Citians grew up loving ‘Fantasy Island.’ Now they’ve made the reboot

As kids growing up in Kansas City, Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain made weekly trips to “Fantasy Island” — via TV. Now the veteran TV scribes get to visit in person as the showrunners of a reboot of the show, premiering at 8 p.m. (CT) Tuesday, Aug. 10, on Fox.

“We absolutely watched every Saturday night after ‘The Love Boat,’” Craft says during a phone interview from the Hyatt Regency Grand Reserve in Rio Grande, Puerto Rico, where the series films. “I remember being on my green shag carpet on Stratford Road in Kansas City, watching ‘Fantasy Island.’ When you hear that ‘Fantasy Island’ music, the theme song, it really gets the adrenaline going.”

Fain says a shortened “cool, contemporary” take on the original theme music will be used on Fox’s new iteration. It exists in the same universe as the original, which is available on Fox-owned, ad-supported free streamer Tubi. And it ignores a short-lived 1998-99 ABC reboot that starred Malcolm McDowell as Mr. Roarke, the character played by Ricardo Montalban in the original.

“We’re kind of pretending that (1998-99) one doesn’t exist,” Fain says. “It had a very different mythology and approach than our take. It was a lot darker. My relationship with that one is that I was (actress) Lauren Holly’s second assistant when it was on and she was a guest star on the show. So beyond that, I wasn’t really aware of it.”

This new version is also unrelated to a horror-themed 2019 “Fantasy Island” movie. Craft and Fain prefer a lighter treatment for their “Fantasy Island.”

“Our take felt contemporary, but still harnesses the magic of the original,” Craft says. “Especially post-pandemic, we’re bringing a lot of wish fulfillment to it.”

The new “Fantasy Island” focuses on Elena Roarke (Roselyn Sanchez, “Devious Maids”), the grand-niece of the original show’s Mr. Roarke. Montalban’s photo is briefly glimpsed in the premiere episode as part of an “ofrenda,” a home altar honoring her deceased relatives.

This “Fantasy Island” pays homage to the original with other Easter eggs.

“Roarke drives a red Jeep that hearkens back to the original’s island vehicles,” Fain says. “Roarke wears a white suit, not all the time, but she wears it in the pilot and intermittently moving forward, but she always wears white.”

There are also references to the original show’s Tattoo character, played by Herve Villechaize, though perhaps not in ways viewers might expect. To say anything more would spoil the premiere.

In the mythology Craft and Fain created for “Fantasy Island,” there’s always a Roarke who is steward of the island.

“What’s different than the original is that it was sort of nebulous who the power source was,” Fain says. “A lot of people thought Mr. Rourke was a fallen angel or he had some kind of power or a lot of the things that happened could be explained with logic and realism. Here, it’s definitely a magical world. We’re leaning heavily into magical realism, and the island is the source of the power and Elena is the conduit of that power, but she is not magical in any way. She does magical, cool stuff sometimes, but it’s the Island that’s the source of the magic.”

Consider it “Fantasy Island” by way of “Lost.”

‘Wish fulfillment and uplift’

Craft and Fain first wrote articles together on the Pembroke Hill School student newspaper, where Fain was editor (class of ’89).

They broke into Hollywood as writers on a few forgotten series before landing on Joss Whedon’s “Angel,” then on Shawn Ryan’s “The Shield.” Later they created or ran several shows of their own, including the 2007-08 ABC drama “Women’s Murder Club,” the teen sci-fi thriller “The 100” and their last show, ABC’s one-season legal mystery “The Fix” (2019).

For “Fantasy Island,” they say they have a mythology for a multi-season series sketched out, but they won’t go too deeply into it in season one, concentrating on establishing the new show and characters. Series regulars also include an assistant to Roarke, introduced in the first episode, and Javier (John Gabriel Rodriguez, “Rosewood”), the head of island transportation who flies “The plane! The plane!”

The new “Fantasy Island” follows the original’s anthology format where new guests arrive each week, experience a fantasy and then depart. It’s a procedural format that’s been successful on other Fox series like “9-1-1,” where the catastrophe of the week generally begins and concludes by the end of the hour. Like “9-1-1,” “Fantasy Island” will feature arced relationship plots among the regular characters that grow and develop as the show continues.

Craft and Fain were approached for this latest series last summer, during the pandemic, by executives at Sony Pictures Television, which owns the rights to “Fantasy Island.”

“One of the things they said is that we really need this sense of wish fulfillment and uplift,” Fain recalls, “and to have a show with an escapism that’s really positive. At the time, sitting in our houses and not being able to go anywhere, that definitely was part of the appeal.”

“We say every guest leaves Fantasy Island transformed,” Craft says. “The theme of the show is really transformation and rebirth. And we felt like we all were longing for that coming out of the pandemic.”

What women really want

With a female Roarke, the writers also want the show to represent a woman’s point of view.

“A lot of our primary guest stars have really cool, visceral fantasies that we think women will respond to, because we certainly do,” Fain says.

In the premiere, Bellamy Young (“Scandal,” “Prodigal Son”) guest stars as a morning TV news anchor from Phoenix who wants to eat and eat without gaining weight — of course there’s a twist on where that fantasy goes.

“She’s been on TV for 25 years and has to not indulge in anything. And we certainly understand that,” Fain says.

“That was inspired by my sister-in-law, Olivia, who is a morning show host in Phoenix,” Fain says. “She doesn’t have the same (back)story, but I know how much you have to keep up your appearance.”

Another episode features a woman whose fantasy is to rest, “because that’s what most women really want,” Craft says. “They don’t want something crazy, they just want a nap.”

Another future story features a mini-reunion of cast members from the Fox series “Melrose Place.” Laura Leighton, Josie Bissett and Daphne Zuniga guest star as friends whose island birthday bash exposes fault lines in their friendships.

“The (story) idea for the episode very much came from us, but the casting Fox suggested, and we were, of course, over the moon,” Fain says. “We were extremely excited when that all came together.”

“We felt we manifested that,” Craft says. “We were also huge ‘Melrose Place’ fans.”

Island life

For many TV series, the writers set up an office in Los Angeles while production happens somewhere else. But because of when Fox wanted the show on air — and to finish filming before hurricane season begins — the production schedule was compressed, and all the writers wound up working in a room poolside in Puerto Rico.

“All day there’d be people walking back and forth outside these big glass windows in bathing suits,” Craft says. “And there’d be bachelorette parties streaming by and we’re sitting there looking at the whiteboard. It was quite surreal.”

Craft and Fain were in Puerto Rico for nine weeks, left for three weeks, then returned in July for the final three weeks of production on the 10-episode first season.

And while most TV series film the bulk of their scenes on soundstages, the new “Fantasy Island” is shot entirely on location. The set for Roarke’s office was built on the beach (a security guard sits outside it ‘round the clock).

After years of writing for a variety of series, Craft and Fain find that “Fantasy Island” allows them to dabble a little in a lot of different storytelling genres.

“We can have a comedy. We can have a romance,” Craft says. “We have a body swap comedy episode, we have time travel.”

But all the stories start with Roarke asking each guest, “What can the island do for you?” It’s similar to the way the plastic surgeons on FX’s “Nip/Tuck” would ask every client, “What don’t you like about yourself?”

“We really wanted Roarke to have a signature line that embodied the aspiration of the show and the goal of the show,” Fain says. “So that line, when Roarke says it, she’s giving every guest an opportunity to say what they think they want. But they’ll get what they need and what they actually get will, in almost every instance, be a little bit different (from what they want).”

Freelance writer Rob Owen: RobOwenTV@gmail.com or on Facebook and Twitter as RobOwenTV.

This story was originally published August 8, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "These Kansas Citians grew up loving ‘Fantasy Island.’ Now they’ve made the reboot."