BRAND-NEW ‘FANTASY’
Hit-show reboot presents same mysterious ‘Island,’ with some modern twists
Elena Roarke can make her guests’ dreams come true. But, much like her predecessor, she won’t do it how they asked.
The reimagined “Fantasy Island,” premiering Tuesday at 9 p.m. on Fox, follows the big picture of the original series: a mysterious island, a mysterious host and a steady rotation of guests looking for hope.
Some, like the first episode’s guest, played by Bellamy Young, want extravagance. Some want answers. Some want a second chance.
“People go to the island with something they want,” Roselyn Sanchez, the 48-year-old Puerto Rican actress who plays Elena, told the Daily News. “That doesn’t mean that’s what they need.”
The original “Fantasy Island,” which ran from 1977 to 1984, starred Ricardo Montalban as Mr. Roarke, Elena’s ancestor. Elena, who stands guard over the island, as is her family’s birthright, isn’t necessarily in charge. The island does as it pleases, and she’s merely tasked with serving as a conduit to the guests.
Ruby Akuda, played by Kiara Barnes, started out as one of those guests, an old woman dying of cancer who wanted to feel young and healthy and vibrant one more time. The island gives her that, but it also keeps her, trading her new body for a life of devotion.
Neither Ruby nor Elena know why the island picked her, just like they don’t know why the island picks its guests, but she is meant to be there for some reason.
Unlike Elena, Ruby has lived her entire life outside, raising children and grandchildren, watching and fighting the world. She looks young now, but she carries 75 years of experience.
“I can put on the same Jonas Brothers T-shirt I wore when I was 13, I can do my hair the same way,” Barnes, 26, joked, “but I won’t necessarily be thinking the same way I did.”
The third member of their team is the pilot, Javier (John Gabriel Rodriquez), who shepherds the guests to and from the island but is also keeping his own secrets. Where Ruby and Elena form a burgeoning friendship, Javier and Elena are more antagonistic, a push-and-pull of two headstrong people, one who wants to help and one who won’t accept any.
“There’s that mystical, fantastical element, the mystery of why the island chooses who it chooses,” Rodriquez told The News. “I think that it chose him for a few reasons, for his own healing but he’s also there to provide support and healing for Elena.”
There’s a sense in “Fantasy Island” that the island is controlling everything. Sanchez referred to it as a “god.” No one knows who or what is controlling it, but the island knows all, even that a couple, played by real-life husband and wife Dave and Odette Annable, seeking thrills and adventure really just need to talk.
And it knows that it needs Elena.
“She got stuck. She was in love. She was engaged. She wanted to have a normal life. Even though she’s very proud to be a Roarke, she wanted to deviate from what everybody does with that last name,” Sanchez said.
But when she tried to pass on the job and turn it over to someone else, the island retaliated.
“Maybe resentment isn’t the right word, but her heart wasn’t in it,” Sanchez said. “At the end, it very much becomes her choice because she understands her responsibility. There’s nothing more beautiful than helping people.”
Elena’s guests eventually realize that she is only trying to help, even if that doesn’t always mean waving a magic wand and fulfilling their wish exactly as presented. They have to work a little harder than that.
“It doesn’t go as planned a lot of the time, because where there’s growth, there’s pain,” Sanchez said. “They have to go through a little bit of pain before they can actually see the rainbow.”