The creators of the reboot of the “Fantasy Island” series are slowly completing the cast team. Kiara Barnes and John Gabriel Rodriquez are the first revealed actors to star in a production.
The first cast members of Fox’s Fantasy Island reboot are now known. Deadline reports that the success star of Kiara Barnes and John Gabriel Rodriquez of If Loving You Is Wrong have joined the cast of the series. Barnes will make a regular appearance on the series, and Rodriguez will make a cameo appearance in a role known as “highly recurring”.
Who will these actors play? Barnes will play Ruby Okoro, described as a warm and wise young woman with an old soul who comes to Fantasy Island with an incurable disease but receives a new life thanks to Roarke and the island. Rodriquez will play Javiar, the tough, handsome and charismatic chief of transportation on Fantasy Island. The island provides Javier a shelter, but as with everything else the island has to offer, he will have to pay dearly for it.
The revamped Fantasy Island comes from writers and executive producers Liz Craft and Sarah Fain, and the series is a co-production between Sony Pictures Television, Gemstone Studios and Fox Entertainment. Here’s what Jeff Frost, president of Sony Pictures Television, and Jason Clodfelter, co-president of Sony Pictures Television, said about the collaboration:
Fantasy Island has always been one of our most popular and iconic series, and when we heard Liz and Sarah’s vision of this world, we immediately knew they had something special. We can’t think of better partners than Fox to work on this totally innovative take on this classic property – it’s a really great and exciting way to launch our new venture, Gemstone Studios.
The original Fantasy Island aired on ABC for seven seasons and 152 episodes between 1978 and 1984, and two TV movies were released in early 1977. The series starred Ricardo Montalbán as the island’s owner, Mr. Roarke, and Hervé Villechaize as his assistant, Tattoo. The 2020 horror film by Lucy Hale of the same title was based on the Fantasy Island story , but was very different from the original series. Reboot Fantasy Island will debut in the summer of 2021.