The ‘Survivor’ Crew Luxed It Up While Contestants Were Marooned In Hell

The first season of Australia‘s third attempt at ‘Survivor‘ kicked off last week, with 24 contestants getting dumped on a beach in Samoa with nothing but the clothes on their back, and told to survive the first night with only the supplies they could snatch.

For most of the contestants (selected from the 15,000+ people who applied), that meant a night in ‘paradise’ without walls, floors, beds, blankets, and for two entire tribes, fire.

But while the tribes of Saanapu (Blue), Vavau (Yellow) and Aganoa (Red) spent their first night in actual hell, the crew working round the clock to record and manipulate that hell actually had it pretty sweet. 
“We all stayed in pretty nice accommodation,” host Jonathan LaPaglia told PEDESTRIAN.TV. “The crew worked round the clock. We’ve got half the crew of the US production, everyone’s doing the work of two people. It’s important to take care of them.”

Each day the crew would travel for anywhere from three to five hours on bumpy roads to reach the tribes, a journey that ended with a 15 minute hike through the jungle. If you’ve been watching too much ‘UnReal‘ and inherently distrust the ‘reality’ of all reality TV shows – make no mistake, these contestants are 100% in the middle of nowhere.


“The roads are tough,”
said LaPaglia. “It’s pretty third world, the roads are pretty poor, so at the end of the day you feel pretty pummeled. The guys are stuck on beach and there’s nothing out there. That’s one of the reasons they chose Samoa. It’s a beautiful tropical island but its not built up like other tourist destinations, it’s pretty remote.”

It’s LaPaglia’s first foray into reality TV hosting, having spent the last decade acting in roles on ‘The Slap‘, ‘Underbelly‘, and most recently, ‘Love Child‘. So how do you live up to a role that Survivor US host Jeff Probst has been defining for 16 years?

“Be yourself,” said LaPaglia, quoting advice Probst gave to him. Did he achieve it? “I don’t think so,” he said with a laugh. “It made me panic when he said that. I come from a world of drama where I can have a script and a role and a character that I can develop and hide behind, and here I have to be myself, and it’s a little daunting.”

And unlike, say, Osher Günsberg on ‘The Bachelor‘, LaPaglia is manipulating the game as much as anyone. The host of Survivor is more than just a link between contestants and viewers – with the right question to the right person, he can flare up tensions and turn tribe members against each other.

None of this is more evident than at Tribal Council, where the tribe votes on which person they want to kick out. “At times it really broke my heart, because they were all trying so hard,” said LaPaglia. “I’ve watched it so many times and didn’t really think about it, but when I was actually in there, I really felt for them. In that moment, that’s what was hard for me.”

So with the obvious villain of Des gone in episode one, who is emerging as the new villain? And who does he want to win the game?

“I haven’t seen how they cut the show together yet, but I think there’s a couple of villains,” he said, and when pushed, adds: Andrew is somewhat villainesque.”

So why is Andrew the marketing professional (in the pink shirt) so villianesque?

“He’s just quite strategic from the get go and has a specific plan about how he’s going to approach the show, but a lot of the other contestants, they were quite the opposite, they valued mateship and loyalty and that was something that was very important to them.”

And surprisingly enough, it turns out you ARE allowed to have a favourite contestant as host. Not that LaPaglia really did, if he’s being honest.

“Every couple days I’d have a new favourite, and that depends on how they were playing the game,” he said. And while it might seem superfluous to say it, but playing the game – more than being well-liked or athletically superior – is key to winning Survivor.

“Keep your head down, try and keep a low profile, but at some point you’re going to need to make a big move,” said LaPaglia, when we ask how you win. “And when that opportunity presents itself, take it, because the biggest mistake you can make in this game is not making a move when you should have and you could have.”

Survivor Australia continues on Channel 10 at 7:30pm on Sunday and Monday night.

Photos: Supplied.

More Stuff From PEDESTRIAN.TV