Tina Louise Opens Up About Why She Almost Quit ‘Gilligan’s Island’: ‘Didn’t Think Show Would Be Successful’

Tina Louise admitted that portraying her iconic character, Ginger Grant, on Gilligan’s Island came with its ups and downs. At one point, she almost quit the show.

“I always enjoyed my work. I left a Broadway show to do it. The CBS casting director Ethel Winant called me at the theater, ‘Do you think you could play this Lucille Ball/Marilyn Monroe-type of character?’ I said yes,” she said in a March 7 interview with Forbes while reflecting on her start on Gilligan’s Island.

“I got there and the director wanted it to be a more sarcastic kind of character. And so, then I didn’t even want to work on it anymore. I told him I wanted to quit. The head of the [CBS] organization called me into his office and he said, ‘We hear you want to leave.’ I explained to him that I didn’t want to play it and I didn’t think the show would be successful, changing the original idea of the character,” Tina, 91, recalled.

“You just can’t go into people’s homes and dress somebody up like a doll and then have her to be not nice,” she told the outlet. “So, he agreed with me and he got rid of the director after it was only a month, and he hired Richard Donner, who was fantastic. He had a great sense of humor and then the writers started writing for what I was supposed to be doing and the show became a hit, and I enjoyed the part.”

The God’s Little Acre actress echoed a similar sentiment when discussing her early days on Gilligan’s Island with Closer last month.

“When I first got to set, the director wanted her to be more like Eve Arden — nasty and talking out the side of her mouth,” she said. “That did not go down well with me. After four weeks, I went to the producer’s office and said I wanted to quit because I knew it was not going to work. He agreed with me. That director went and then the writers started writing for Ginger.”

Tina also said that she related to Ginger’s character in some ways.

“I think she was a very smart, exceptional child. She had moved around to all these different places, so she knew how to get along with everybody,” the New York native reflected. “She knew what she wanted and was going to get it, which made her quite frustrated that she had to be shipwrecked. But she was determined to make the best of it. Ginger knew she was eventually going to get off that island.”

She portrayed Ginger for 98 episodes of the series from 1964 to 1967. But beyond her acting career, which also included roles in Dallas and CHiPs, Tina said that her proudest achievement was becoming a mom to daughter Caprice Crane.

“I’m so grateful that I had her. I feel like whatever childhood I could have, I had with my daughter Caprice, who I raised by myself when I split up with her father,” she said. “We would have Easter egg hunts, and on Christmas Eve I’d invite all of her friends over. All of the things that never happened for me. I was extremely fortunate that a few years ago my daughter had twins. Kingston and Clementine are now 6.”