The Love Boat Recast Its Captain After One Episode Because He Was Too Sexy

Wilford Lloyd Baumes' romantic comedy series "The Love Boat" sounds surreal to the modern ear. The series, which premiered in the late 1970s, was set on the Pacific Princess, a cruise ship that would regularly make jaunts around the ocean for tourists. Gavin MacLeod played the ship's captain, Merrill Stubing, although his character was typically credited merely as "Your Captain." The vessel also had a regular crew that appeared in almost every episode, as played by Ted Lange, Bernie Kopell, and more.

The novel part of "The Love Boat" was that its main cast didn't play the show's protagonists. Most episodes centered on a one-off character who would take a ride on the Pacific Princess in the middle of some sort of romantic or relationship crisis. The ship's crew, seeing the guest in distress, would then take on the same role as the faeries in William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," ensuring that the passenger solved their romantic issues. Indeed, though the ship's crew was human, they possessed an eerie, semi-divine quality and were immensely appealing.

"The Love Boat" hosted lots of guest stars (Tom Hanks included), ultimately running for a gangbusters 250 episodes across nine seasons and several late-stage specials. It was a legit phenomenon, and Captain Stubing was our guide. When MacLeod died in 2021, TV lost a legend.

MacLeod, however, wasn't the original choice to play Captain Stubing. As discussed in the 2025 docuseries "TV We Love" (via People Magazine), Australian actor Ted Hamilton played Captain Thomas Ford in the original pilot for "The Love Boat." The only problem was, Hamilton was deemed way, way too handsome for the role. Recall that viewers were supposed to be tuning in for the guest stars, not the sexy, sexy captain. Thus, Hamilton's Ford was replaced by MacLeod's Stubing.

On paper, Ted Hamilton is excellent casting for a romantic comedy series like "The Love Boat." Hamilton, an Australian pop singer, had charm oozing out of his pores. He was responsible for hit songs like "The Things We Did Last Summer" and "The Lovin' Touch" in the late 1950s. He was a regular installation on Australian TV, appearing on many musical variety shows and his most notable TV role was that of police inspector Kevin Dwyer on the Aussie cop show "Division 4," a series that ran for seven seasons. (Hamilton often popped up on American series as well, including the all time great war TV show that was "M*A*S*H.")

"Division 4" led directly to Hamilton's casting in the original "Love Boat" pilot in 1976. Recalling the story of Hamilton's casting in an episode of "TV We Love," TV writer Jim Colucci admitted that the actor was a little too perfect for his role. It seems that the then-head of the ABC network felt that the guest stars boarding the Pacific Princess would be too distracted by this handsome Aussie to work on their own romantic issues. As Colucci put it: 

"The President of ABC was furious. They said, 'Why? He's good-looking. He's a good actor.' [...] And he said, 'I don't think you understand. The purpose of 'The Love Boat' is that these passengers all want to f*** each other. On this show, they're all just gonna want to f*** the captain.' The captain was too f***able."

Which, of course, sounds like a problem you want to have. But Hamilton was out, and Gavin MacLeod was in. MacLeod was handsome yet more affably charming than a sexual dynamo. Which, ultimately, was better for the show.