Raquel Welch Lost A Gilligan's Island Role For A Surprising Reason

When Raquel Welch passed away aged 82 in 2023, she left behind a remarkable career as an actress. Welch had a long road to becoming a Hollywood icon, but after appearances in movies like "Fantastic Voyage" and "One Million Years B.C.," people all over the globe knew her. However, her career could have looked vastly different had she landed the role of Mary Ann Summers on "Gilligan's Island."

Welch appeared in plenty of television shows throughout her career, but she was predominantly known for her film work. When she was just starting out, she likely would have taken whatever came her way. And that could have entailed playing one of the famous "Gilligan's Island" castaways, as the show's creator Sherwood Schwartz confirmed in an interview with Retrocrush. "Dawn Wells was the one who got the job over Raquel," Schwartz said. "She's a wonderful lady. Raquel was a fine actress, but she was just too sophisticated for the role."

He has a point. Photos of Welch dressed as Mary Ann for her audition have appeared online, and she looks like a supermodel cosplaying as a farm girl. Wells was certainly beautiful but in a far more down-home kind of way, making her more suitable for Mary Ann and her farm girl sensibilities. Welch probably would have been a better fit for movie star Ginger Grant (Tina Louise). In the long run, considering the career she had, Welch probably didn't mind being passed over for the role. 

"Gilligan's Island" premiered in 1964 when Raquel Welch was still trying to make a name for herself. Getting cast on the show would have done just that, even if it wasn't a critical hit when it first came out (its reputation would improve with reruns airing all the time on syndication). Instead, she had to make do with one-off appearances in shows like "McHale's Navy" and "Bewitched." But things would pick up in 1966 when she became a certified bombshell after getting introduced to the masses in "Fantastic Voyage" and "One Million Years B.C." For the latter, running around in a fur bikini for much of the runtime surely helped people remember her.

"Gilligan's Island" ended in 1967, which means there's an alternate timeline in which Welch played Mary Ann and was too busy with her TV commitment to star in her two earliest defining roles. She had plenty of other great movies after those, like 1973's "The Three Musketeers," for which she won a Golden Globe. But there's a possibility she could've been typecast had she won the "Gilligan's Island" role. One tragic detail about "Gilligan's Island" is that many cast members felt pigeon-holed once the show ended, and it's possible playing the down-to-earth Mary Ann would've made it hard for casting directors to see Welch as anything else.

In the end, Dawn Wells didn't seem to mind being known mostly for Mary Ann. Speaking to Forbes just a few years prior to her death, she said: "The series was very good for me, for all of us who were there, because we're known worldwide. And Mary Ann is loved all over the world. It's amazing."