Pia Miranda on life after Survivor and her new series Invisible Boys

Five years ago, actress Pia Miranda won half a million dollars on TV – but she worried it would spell the end of her acting career for good.

The last time I spoke to Australian actress Pia Miranda, almost five years ago, she’d just learned she was $500,000 richer.

The Looking for Alibrandi star had just won the sixth season of Australian Survivor, but despite the massive cash windfall, she revealed she was feeling “mixed emotions” after a season that revealed another side of her personality to viewers – one they didn’t always like.

Miranda made cunning moves in the game, ousting audience favourites, and triumphed amid a fierce backlash from some viewers.

“As far as my career goes, I definitely felt like I had more to lose than gain from this,” she told news.com.au at the time.

“Bloody hell, I don’t think I’m gonna work as an actor again, so the money will probably just get me by.”

Pia Miranda was a surprisingly controversial Survivor contestant...

...and now plays conservative mum Anna in Invisible Boys.

Fast forward to 2025, and I’m chatting to Miranda again, this time about her supporting role in the new Stan drama series Invisible Boys, streaming from Thursday.

Based on Holden Sheppard’s award-winning novel, the 10-part series from creator/director Nicholas Verso tells the story of a group of gay teens in the remote town of Geraldton, Perth. It’s 2017 and elsewhere in the country, people are jubilantly celebrating the result of the same-sex marriage plebiscite.

But for students like Charlie (Joseph Zada) and Zeke (Aydan Calafiore), the ‘Yes’ vote may as well have happened on another planet, as they navigate a world hostile to their burgeoning identities.

Miranda is a standout as Zeke’s conservative, homophobic, casually racist mother Anna. By Miranda’s own admission, she was an “intense” character to play.

“I thought, well, if I don’t like her, then no one’s really going to understand her on any other level other than as a cartoon villain. I didn’t want that, because there are people who have those views and we want to be able to see her as a real person so we can open up those conversations,” she says.

“And so I just tried to work out a lot of ‘why’s’: Why is she like this? Why does she think this way, and what’s she trying to achieve?”

Aydan Calafiore is a standout as Miranda’s on-screen son Zeke.

While the show isn’t overly explicit, it is frank in its portrayal of teen sexuality. As befits a series centred around the private lives of a group of teenage boys, there’s an awful lot of … ahem … self-pleasuring depicted on screen. In poor Zeke’s case, you wish mum Anna would take the hint and learn to knock before she barges into his room for another lecture each night.

“Oh my God,” Miranda squeals as I bring up those scenes. “It really nails the awkwardness of being a teenager. There was a lot of body lotion being squirted.”

The show’s young cast are all terrific, but Aydan Calafiore as Zeke is a particularly heartbreaking highlight, a high-achieving student who’s never good enough (read: straight enough) to win his parents’ approval. Miranda says she was energised by their scenes together.

“I’ve been working a long time – I’m old and tired, lets not lie – so it was so nice to be around this young energy,” she says.

“We just had such a great rapport. It’s really his first big job and he was so good and so confident – he elevated me.”

Actors Joe Klocek (left) and Joseph Zada in Invisible Boys.

There is one minor issue in their scenes together – one that’s dogged Miranda since her breakthrough film role playing high school student Josie Alibrandi at the age of 27. Is Anna really old enough to have a high-schooler and a young adult as her sons?

For the record, she is: Miranda will turn 52 in June.

“Ageing on screen is quite confronting … I feel like I don’t see what everyone else is seeing. But it’s nice to play my age and play the mum of a teenager,” she says. “That’s my own experience – I have a teenager.”

Now, back to that Survivor win. Back in 2019, Miranda seemed to think this surprisingly controversial foray into reality TV might have nuked her acting career.

“I copped a lot of shit for it. [When I spoke to you] I was probably in the throes of that, going, ‘Oh my God, people are threatening to kill me, what’s going to happen?’ I really didn’t know what was going to happen to me,” she confesses.

Miranda said her Survivor win came at the perfect time. Picture: Mark Stewart

But the $500k prize money was a “lifesaver,” coming as it did shortly before the Covid pandemic shut down so many creative industries.

“I’m a freelancer, my husband (former Lo-Tel singer Luke Hanigan) works in TV, and we kind of didn’t really work much for two years,” she says.

“We just earn a normal wage, probably less than normal wage in Australia. But all that dried up for two years, So it was sort of life-changing in the sense that I could get through that two years of COVID whilst breathing.”

Miranda did manage to squeeze in one fun use of the money before it went on toilet paper and RAT tests during the dark days of 2020 and 2021: Miranda and her husband took their two children to Disneyland.

Her verdict on that trip suggests she hasn’t lost any of that Survivor fighting spirit: “It was amazing! ...Worth every death threat.”

Invisible Boys streams on Stan from this Thursday February 13.

Originally published as Pia Miranda on life after Survivor and her new series Invisible Boys