Director Jeff Wadlow on populating Fantasy Island with heavy-hitters like Sons Of Anarchy's Kim Coates

A big draw of the original Fantasy Island series was seeing who would step off the charter plane at the beginning of each week’s episode. To create a similar feeling for his 2020 horror movie remake, co-writer/director Jeff Wadlow and his team assembled an eclectic cast that includes The CW star Lucy Hale, beloved character actor Michael Rooker, Veronica Mars’ Ryan Hansen, and comedian Jimmy O. Yang, just to name a few. But one of the movie’s most surprising moments of, “wait, he’s in this too?” has to be when Kim Coates—best known as Sons Of Arachy’s Tig—turns up halfway through to shake up some of the islanders’ fantasies. We spoke with Wadlow about the casting process, and asked how he got Coates on board to play one of Fantasy Island’s heavies. As it turns out, it’s pretty easy to talk actors into your movie when you’re filming in Fiji.