AUSTRALIAN SURVIVOR IS BACK, BABEY! As of Wednesday night, Jonathan LaPaglia will return to your screens with a whole new batch of contestants in another season of Champions V Contenders. Ahead of the premiere, JLP chatted to PEDESTRIAN.TV about what to expect from our 24 new hopefuls.
If you haven’t given them a suss already, check them out below. In the Champions’ corner there’s Boost Juice queen / Shark Tank judge Janine, NRL legend Andrew (or ET as his fans call him), Looking for Alibrandi star Pia, and Olympic gold medallist Steven to name a couple. In the Contenders’ corner, prepare to be introduced to mullet man John, ice cream maker Harry, cleaner and tsunami survivor Sarah, and retired AFL player Shaun.
With so many huge personalities in one pic, JLP said there’s plenty of saucy conflict at Tribal Council to look forward to.
“I ask a few questions and I sit back and they just take over which I love,” he said. “I just get to watch them rip into each other and reveal a bunch of stuff.”
Hell yeah.
And though LaPaglia wasn’t in a rush to call this season the best one yet – that’s up to us viewers – he does feel like it’s “every bit good as the other seasons.”
“From the get go, the gameplay has been brilliant so from an entertainment point of view, it should be a cracking season,” he said, adding that he thought some of the gameplay was fresh as hell.
This is LaPaglia’s fourth term at hosting the great game but he still finds it so damn unpredictable. The stacked bloke revealed the crew like to place bets on who’s going to win challenges and be the sole survivor but they always get it wrong.
“But that’s the appeal of the show, you don’t know who’s going to win and often, it’s the average person you just never anticipated,” he said. “And as an audience member that’s great, because you look at that and you think ‘Well, that could be me.’”
Speaking of which, if you have been thinking about applying to Australian Survivor, JLP did share some wise words of advice.
“You need to be a strategist on some level and figure out the situation you’re in, and the situation your fellow competitor is in,” he said. “You need to think five moves ahead. You need to be able to think on those kinds of global levels.”
But, as JLP continued, a skill that trumps all of this is risk-taking.
“You have to be willing to take risks, if you can figure all that stuff out but not take risks, you’re going to be paralysed, you’re not going to be able to move forward in the game. Risk-taking is key.”
You heard it here, mates.
As for the upcoming season, JLP did tease something quite exciting:
“We actually do have a couple of twists this year, one of them is brand new to our knowledge – it hasn’t been done anywhere else,” he said. “It’s late in the season and it was well received from the contestants and caught them off guard.”
Australian Survivor premieres Wednesday, 24 July at 7.30pm on Channel 10. LOCK IT IN.
