Why Tom Hanks Turned Down An Episode Of Fantasy Island

Tom Hanks once turned down a chance to appear on ABC's "Fantasy Island" very early in his career, and his reasoning says a lot about how he viewed his trajectory at the time.

"I had to say no to 'Fantasy Island' back when I was doing 'Bosom Buddies,'" Hanks told Oprah Winfrey in a 2001 interview for O Magazine. "I got an offer in between our two grand seasons of 'Bosom Buddies,' and I said, 'You know, I'm not going to do 'Fantasy Island.'"

When Winfrey compared the show to ABC's companion series, "The Love Boat," Hanks pointed to his own guest appearance on the show as part of the reason he passed. "I did a 'Love Boat!' And based on my trip on the 'Love Boat,' I said, 'I'd just as soon not do 'Fantasy Island.'" He added that this period marked a shift in how he saw himself as an actor: "Up until then, I'd made a career out of playing ordinary guys who couldn't figure out how things work."

Hanks' hesitation to appear on "Fantasy Island" wasn't coming out of nowhere. Before "Bosom Buddies" premiered, he had already appeared on "The Love Boat" a month prior, in October 1980. "I was being promoted as a new star of ABC," he explained while on "Late Night with Seth Meyers" in 2025.

"The Love Boat" (which we named one of the 10 beloved '70s shows that aged terribly) typically featured multiple storylines per episode. Hanks appeared in Season 4, Episode 1, "Sergeant Bull/Friends and Lovers/Miss Mother," in a storyline involving a romantic ruse meant to keep his character at bay — the kind of role he would later move away from as his career involved.

ABC's tactic paid off, as playing Kip/Buffy Wilson on "Bosom Buddies" became Hanks' breakout role, marking a shift in the types of opportunities he would pursue. Reflecting on that period, Hanks later told Winfrey, "After I did 'A League of Their Own' [in 1992], I took a year off from making any artistic decisions. At that time, my career was an express train. I was continually being asked to make movies, so I felt I had won an actor's lottery. If people were asking, how could I say no? ... I finally had to ask myself, 'What kind of creative entity am I? And when do I start to control some of my artistic destiny?'"