A wilder Gilligan
St. Petersburg resident Zac Turney has his moment in the spotlight starting tonight in the TBS reality show The Real Gilligan's Island.
By CHASE SQUIRES
Published June 8, 2005
Meet Zac Turney.
You can call him Gilligan.
Just don't call him "Little Buddy."
Turney, a 24-year-old who was once a cabana boy at the Don CeSar Beach Resort and Spa, makes his cable television debut tonight on TBS's second installment of reality show The Real Gilligan's Island , playing one of two competing Gilligans.
But Turney, now a full-time student at Eckerd College who moved to St. Petersburg from New Smyrna Beach, is a little wilder than Bob Denver's bumbling original. And he doesn't really like the nickname "Little Buddy."
"On the commercials (for the show), you see a naked guy run by. That's me," Turney said, hinting at what's to come. "Your mind is on the game when you're playing, but anything I do, I have all these background games going on. I said, "I'm going to ham it up and increase my TV time.' I was raking up the drama where I could, stoking the fire."
That's part of the competition. Like so many reality shows, Gilligan's Island pits competitors who work first as teams, then as individuals, in challenges and voting each other out. The winner gets $250,000.
Turney said his competition took about a month and wrapped up in October, before TBS's first installment of the show ran in November. Viewers might think the new cast didn't learn anything from watching the first edition, but that's because it aired after the second show was done. He can't say how it turned out or how he did.
But Turney, who left his hotel gig to study biology and creative writing, said he had fun. He wants to be a writer, so maybe his moment in the spotlight could help find a publisher, he said. He's also open to meeting women, and his Web site (www.zacturney.com) might help there, too, he added.
The site includes an essay Turney wrote about his goals, life, love, happiness and the like.
"I try and do everything, consuming life with a voracious hunger. ... My life is full of such strange and unlikely experiences that those who know me are no longer surprised by my adventures."
His latest adventure, getting on TV, was "random, stupid luck," Turney said.
He was bored one day when the casting team was in town last summer, and he stood in line.
"I was thinking, "I don't want to be Gilligan, I want to be the professor.' Then I saw where you have to have a Ph.D., so I said, "Well, looks like I'm stuck as Gilligan."'
Once in the competition, except for being hungry, island life was swell, Turney said. He came to a realization: Gilligan had it made.
He's on an island with two beautiful women, and somehow he "accidentally" foils all those attempts to get away.
Gilligan, Turney decided, was the real mastermind on the island, sabotaging every attempt to escape.
Hmmm.
At least that's how he sees it.
Turney said he thought a lot about that on the island.
And he taught himself how to make straw hats.