Survivor host Jonathan LaPaglia to star in rebooted Top Gear series

Veteran actor and Survivor host Jonathan LaPaglia has jetted to South America after announcing his shock new career move.

Jonathan LaPaglia likes to regularly shift gears – literally and figuratively.

The versatile actor and host is speaking from Columbia, where he has just started filming the rebooted local version of Top Gear for Paramount+, alongside Beau Ryan and Blair Joscelyne.

Battling jet lag after a long first day of shooting in the South American country, the self-admitted petrolhead and longtime fan of the franchise, who used to fantasise about doing laps as the star in a reasonably priced car, says there’s an element of wish fulfilment for his latest gig.

Jonathan LaPaglia is the host of Australian Survivor: Titans V Rebels

“It is a dream come true,” he says, “but be careful what you wish for because it’s harder than I imagined it was going to be. But it’s fun.”

LaPaglia is also currently on our screens flexing his acting musicals on the hit Binge drama Strife (a second season has just been announced) and will soon return to arguably his best known gig, as the taskmaster and tribal interrogator in the new season of Australian Survivor.

His work life is hectic, demanding, unpredictable – and frequently takes him away from his adopted home in California and his wife and daughter – but he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I do like to be challenged by different things and I do like to keep working and be engaged,” he says. “Fortunately, it’s all come together this year, so I’m lucky. I’m not going to complain.”

This year’s season of Australian Survivor – titled Titans Vs Rebels – will be LaPaglia’s ninth in charge and he says he’s still learning on the job. When he first landed the gig in 2016, he thought it looked easy but quickly discovered it was a whole lot more than sipping cocktails in a tropical paradise.

Top Gear Australia hosts Beau Ryan, Blair Joscelyne, Jonathan LaPaglia. Picture: Paramount+

While his lot isn’t anywhere near as rough as the contestants – with two tribes of 12 pitted against each other in contests to win food or advantages and gradually voted out until only the Sole Survivor remains – LaPaglia says it “continues to be one of the hardest jobs because it requires a very specific skill set that you can’t learn anywhere else”.

Indeed, when LaPaglia contacted the revered host of the original US Survivor, Jeff Probst, he basically got a version of the famous franchise line ‘I’ve got nothing for you – head on back to camp’.

“We went and had breakfast and he’s like ‘I wish I could tell you how to do it, but I don’t even know how I do it anymore’,” recalls LaPaglia with a laugh. “It was just something that evolved over the years because if you look at when he first started it’s completely different now what he does and he said ‘I don’t even know how to put it into words’. And I was like ‘Oh, great’, but he’s right. It’s something that you can’t really learn.”

Adelaide-born LaPaglia, who first trained as a doctor before switching to acting, says it’s the theatre (his first love), TV and film skills from shows including Cold Case, Love Child and The Slap, that have helped him navigate the many moving parts of the production filmed on the island of Upolu in Samoa. For 47 days and in all weathers, he introduces and explains the challenges, gees up the contestants and then wrangles the Tribal Council at the end of each episode, where players are voted out.

Australian Survivor’s season on Titans V Rebels.

“I got a ton of scripts to learn every day for the challenges and stuff like that and I learn everything,” he says. “Even tribals, we have a story meeting before the Tribal based on what’s going on at camp, and we develop a whole bunch of questions that we think would work with the story.

“So, I learn 40 to 50 questions before I go in there … no one’s feeding me that, I’m not reading it off a piece of paper or teleprompter, that’s all me and I feel like it’s the years of doing that as an actor that definitely help with that.”

Australian Survivor is returning on the back of its Logie Award for Most Outstanding Reality Program for last year’s Heroes Vs Villains season. LaPaglia says the award was “a testament to the skill and the dedication of the crew”, who also have to brave long hours and the elements to produce more episodes than their US cousins, on a fraction of the budget.

“It’s proof to the crew of how good they are and what they are capable of delivering on pretty meagre resources compared to the US,” he says.

Asher Keddie and Jonathan LaPaglia in a scene from Strife.

As to the ongoing allure of the format for him and audiences alike, LaPaglia nominates unpredictability as the main factor, as well as a broad appeal to everyday people watching at home. He says he finds it nearly impossible at the beginning to predict which players will be eliminated early and which ones have a real shot at the $500,000 prize.

“There’s this misconception that you need to be buff and fit to win the show, but that’s not actually the case,” he says. “Often that actually becomes a detriment in the back half of the game. It’s really about your social skills, and so I think the viewer watches the show and they think ‘you know what – I could do that. This looks tough, but I could do that’.”

In contrast to last season, which featured a mixture of new and returning players, this year’s crop consists entirely of newbies. Titans Vs Rebels is billed as the “big wigs vs. the battlers” and “rule makers vs. the rulebreakers”, but LaPaglia admits that while the contestants are chosen carefully to fit one or other of the tribes, in reality the definitions are a little arbitrary.

“That’s what is a little funky about the theme this year is that there is an overlap between the two and if I’m perfectly honest, we find that with most seasons,” he says. “As the seasons progress, whether it’s Champions Vs Contenders or Brains Vs Brawn, people tend to have a bit of both attributes. You need a bit of everything to navigate Survivor and win in the end.”

Australian Survivor: Titans Vs Rebels premieres Monday, January 29 at 7.30pm on 10 and 10 Play.

Originally published as Survivor host Jonathan LaPaglia to star in rebooted Top Gear series