From coconut radios to pesky cosmonauts to coconut phones to a surprising victory at the Cannes Film Festival, very little that happened on “Gilligan’s Island” was ever mistaken for reality.

Leave it to “The Bachelor” mad scientist Mike Fleiss to turn the beloved Sherwood Schwartz chestnut into deliriously exploitative unscripted television. Featuring real people cast for their resemblance to popular culture’s daffiest group of castaways, “The Real Gilligan’s Island” premieres Tuesday on TBS.

Searching for the perfect lovely lady to stand in for glamorous actress Ginger, Fleiss turned to Rachel Hunter. Even though your typical swimsuit-modeling legend has better things to do than spend three weeks on a deserted island playing an elimination game for the kinds of prizes she could just buy on a whim, Hunter worked with Fleiss on ABC’s beauty show debacle “Are You Hot?” and jumped at the chance to collaborate again.

“I love working with Mike,” Hunter gushes. “If there’s anyone you’re going to work with in reality, it’s Mike. He pushes the envelope and knows reality inside and out. I’ve always just enjoyed his projects.”

It didn’t hurt that Hunter vividly remembers rushing home in the afternoons to watch episodes of “Gilligan’s Island,” which played regularly on one of the two stations her childhood home in New Zealand received.

“I just loved Gilligan, he was such a goofbag,” she laughs. “I loved how even though it was deserted, all these colorful characters were always on the show – the crazy millionaires, the aloofness of Ginger always wafting about in her evening gown, Mary Ann just running around so happy about everything and cooking a pie and completely out of her mind. She should have been on Prozac the entire time. And the Professor! He was so asexual, wasn’t he?”

Although Hunter insists, as reality show contestants always seem to do, that she would relive the “Gilligan’s” experience again in a heartbeat, she had many reservations about the limited food supply made available to the castaways as they competed in challenges based on incidents from the series.

“We were given certain things, but I couldn’t eat,” Hunter says. “It was like eating cardboard. You’ll probably see a more voluptuous Rachel at the beginning and a more scrawny Rachel at the end.”

“The Real Gilligan’s Island” begins with two groups of castaways, from which a final group of seven – one for each character on the sitcom – will be chosen. Hunter’s Ginger counterpart is former “Baywatch” star Nicole Eggert.

Hunter promises that she was always herself when the cameras were rolling and that she never felt any pressure to follow in the footsteps of Tina Louise’s aloof, spoiled Ginger. She was taken aback, though, by how some of her castmates were desperate to play characters.

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“I’m really happy-go-lucky, and I find it really hard to find something in someone that I don’t like,” Hunter says. “I’ll usually like you no matter what. But there are people on this island that I just f—— can’t stand, that are just horrible, frightening, just desperate-to-become-famous people.”

Hunter seems to have had particular trouble with her Mary Ann.

“How can I put this?” Hunter says haltingly, trying to avoid stirring up trouble. “I always tried to be really nice to Mary Ann. She ended up being pretty evil.”

A poll on TBS’s Web site suggests that nearly two-thirds of users would rather be with Mary Ann than Ginger, but Hunter – most recently an object of lust in the Fountains of Wayne video “Stacey’s Mom” – can only scoff, “I don’t think I need to make a case. The case is closed.”

Perhaps because of the tension with some of her castmates, Hunter took the game-show aspect of “The Real Gilligan’s Island” very seriously.

“Competition is competition no matter what,” she declares. “I don’t have any of that pop psychology that America has. To me, when you’re put up against competition, you’re competitive no matter what. I’m not going to sit back and let somebody win.”

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AP-NY-11-26-04 1554EST