Recasting the castaways

Irish Americans Chris O’Malley, Jim Murray and Bob Fahey all appear on the hit cable TV series inspired by the popular 1960s sit-com about seven very different people shipwrecked on an uncharted desert island. The new show, something of a comic take on “Survivor,” started off with two teams of castaways competing to get off the island. In each episode, two like characters — such as the Mary Anns –compete in appointed tasks to win prizes for their team. Competitors who fail at their tasks are eliminated until only seven castaways — people resembling Gilligan, the Skipper, the Professor, millionaires Thurston and Lovey Howell, movie star Ginger and farm girl Mary Ann — remain.
As if the thousands of people who showed up for casting calls weren’t enough, representatives from the network also spent considerable time visiting marinas in hopes of finding possible skippers and millionaires. That’s where they found one of their Gilligans –O’Malley, a 20-year-old University of Massachusetts student who works in a marina and who is locally famous for having crashed a $1 million boat into another $1 million boat because he was distracted by a girl in a bikini.
The self-professed goofball, who is much better looking and intelligent than his sit-com counterpart, said he initially balked at the idea of competing on a reality show, even though TBS producers told him he was just what they were looking for.
“This doesn’t really happen too often in Boston,” the faux Gilligan marveled. “It wasn’t really my thing. I never really watched reality TV too much, so it wasn’t something I was too interested in.”
So, how did those wily Hollywood folk convince him to give it a try?
“How she convinced me to come to the audition was she talked to my boss and she said I could have the day off if I came to the interview and that was enough for me,” O’Malley said, referring to the casting representative. He said he was told that his “nervous charm” was what won him his spot on the island.
Once he was actually there, the young castaway said he was fascinated by the way vastly different people — including “Gingers” Nicole Eggert and Rachel Hunter — behave toward each other when they are stranded on an island with nothing to do.
“It’s an interesting concept,” he said. “It’s strange. You’re surrounded by the same people your whole life — you don’t think you are, but you really are. Just by people who are very like-minded. Just very similar to you in every way and then when you’re taken out of your environment and thrown on an island with a bunch of people that you never would normally meet or spend time with, it’s wild. It was a little scary at first, but I kind of got used to it and made friends. It worked out. It was a lot of fun.”
Although O’Malley is understandably excited to tell friends he remains in touch with Rachel Hunter, it is his relationship with Murray that seems to be the island connection the Gilligan portrayer most values.
“He pretty much saved my trip,” O’Malley said. “Whenever it got too much — the drama got high at times and I’m not really too much of a dramatic person and he’s not really either, and we kind of came from the same background, the same area, obviously, so it was good to have him.”
O’Malley also credited his Irish roots with helping him cope with the drama, the heat and the hunger he experienced during the show.
“A sense of humor definitely helped,” he said. “I came from an Irish-Catholic neighborhood near Dorchester where we all have the same sense of humor. There’s just a way about us. I think that’s part of the Boston culture. It might be pessimistic at times, but it’s also real kind of easygoing and friendly.”
Said Murray, “Skipper Bob’s Irish, Gilligan Chris is Irish,” confirming he has a similar attitude to O’Malley’s. “We’re all from the Boston area. We’re all pretty much immigrants from a couple of hundred years ago. . . . The funny thing was Skipper Bob had his boat maybe a half-mile from mine in the river and I never met the guy. We were right next to each other.”
Murray went on to say he didn’t have any hard feelings toward Fahey, the competing team’s skipper, who was eliminated early in the series.
“We got along famously,” the father of two and grandfather of four assured. “You have to respect a fellow boater or skipper. There was no animosity.”
While O’Malley may have been talent-scouted at the marina, Murray admitted he wanted to be a castaway.
“I was basically driving to work one day and I heard about the casting call on the radio and I thought, ‘Well, that’s something I can do,’ ” said the leisure-time skipper and former Navy man. “So, I sent in some photos of myself and my boat and I got a call right back saying, ‘Can you meet us for an audition in Boston?'”
The owner of a Christmas tree farm in Maine and the Boston-based Stonecraft, a business that specializes in building stone walls and repairing churches, Murray said he didn’t think much about the audition until he got the call to go to Los Angeles and meet with more show representatives.
Crediting his attitude and confidence for snagging him the job, Murray said he got along with pretty much everybody and plans to keep in touch with his fellow castaways once the experience is over. One thing he won’t miss about being stranded on an island, however, is all that downtime.
“I’m not used to sitting around waiting for things to happen,” he said. “I like to make things happen. [I spent most of my time] beach combing, fishing, walking, napping. You make your own entertainment. You don’t have a TV or stereo or anything. We interact with people, like they did in the old days before they had all the electric gadgets.”
“The Real Gilligan’s Island” can be seen on TBS.