Jonathan LaPaglia may have lost his job as host of Australian Survivor, but he hasn’t lost his sense of humour. When TV WEEK chats to him over the phone just a few weeks after the shock announcement of his axing, he’s at his home in Los Angeles and, by the sounds of it, keeping busy.
“Look, I’m just refreshing my LinkedIn profile and sending out the job applications right now,” he says with a laugh. “That’s what I’m doing.”
Jonathan, 55, is seeing the loss of his Survivor gig as “an opportunity” to make acting his main focus again.
“You know, Survivor has been an incredible job for the last 10 years,” he says. “But I’ve thrown myself into it and it’s taken up a lot of my time and headspace, and so now I think it’s time to refocus on acting.”
Born and raised in Adelaide, Jonathan studied medicine and worked as a doctor before following older brother Anthony into acting in the US. He starred in shows such as New York Undercover and The District, and also appeared in The Sopranos and NCIS, before being drawn back to Australia to star in The Slap, Underbelly: Badness and Love Child, and, more recently, Strife. Although his home is in the US, with wife Ursula Brooks and daughter Tilly, he’s keen to take on more Australian roles.
“I love working with the crew there, so, yeah, a hundred per cent, I’d be open to that. Do you know someone who has something?” he asks, laughing again.
Jonathan is speaking to TV WEEK to promote the latest season of Australian Survivor, Australia V The World. He shot the season not knowing it would be his last. It’s a huge season to go out on, with seven overseas powerhouses, including US Survivor legends Cirie Fields, Parvati Shallow and Tony Vlachos, competing against seven of the best Australian players, including “King George” Mladenov, David “The Golden God” Genat and Shonee Bowtell.
“It’s crazy when you think about it,” Jonathan says. “It truly is a cast of the greatest players of all time. Tony’s won twice, Parvati’s won once and almost won a second time, and Cirie’s considered to be the greatest player that never won. I mean, wow. That’s wild.”
The season was filmed in Samoa over just 16 days, and Jonathan says he initially had concerns about it being such a short season.
“I’m like, ‘Does that have a negative effect on the gameplay? Does it destroy the heart and soul of the show, the relationships?’ But I was wrong. None of that happened. And I think it’s because we have a cast of such experienced players. They really brought this energy and excitement to it, and they kicked into fifth gear the minute they hit the beach.”
Having hosted Australian Survivor since 2016, Jonathan admits he’s going to miss working on the show.
“I love this game and I love being part of it, so I’m going to really miss that. And it took me a while to try and figure out how to do this job. I slowly started to work it out, but I never felt like I fully mastered it. So I’m going to miss that opportunity to go back there and keep working on it.”
He also says he’s going to miss the crew, the players (“I love them”) and the audience.
“I had so much fun with the audience over this 10-year journey.”
As Jonathan explained in an Instagram post at the end of June, he found out he’d been dropped from Survivor when he received a call from the network “thanking me for all my hard work and dedication to the show but for next season they are ‘going in a different direction’”.
He added, “Ratings had dipped a bit recently and they wanted to do something drastic to shake things up.”
Fans were shocked at the news, with some declaring on social media that they would stop watching the show, and more than 8000 signing a petition to bring him back. The outpouring of support came as a surprise to Jonathan.
“I didn’t appreciate that people really supported me that much. So that’s been incredibly humbling,” he says.
Would he return to the show as host at some point in the future if he was asked?
“I’d have to really think about that,” he says. “I wouldn’t say no. It would depend on who was doing the production. Like I said, I really love this game. But the way I was cut was a little unceremonious, so I’d be a liar to say that that didn’t sting a bit. So the short answer is yes, I’d be open to it, but it would depend.”
As for the rumours that Jeff Probst is going to quit as host of the US version of Survivor and Jonathan is going to take his place, Jonathan doesn’t think that’s ever going to happen.
“Jeff? Are you kidding me? I don’t think he’s going to walk away from that. But, sure, if they ask me, yeah. But it would have to be with Jeff’s blessing.”
When it comes to the new host of Australian Survivor, Jonathan has a few words of advice.
“Buckle up!” he says. “This job is deceptively difficult. You can’t Google it. You can’t find a YouTube on it. It really is baptism by fire. But the advice I would give would be the role of host in Survivor shouldn’t be about the host. Don’t make it about you.”
