For Australian Survivor host Jonathan LaPaglia, Los Angeles is home. It’s where he and wife Ursula Brooks brought up their daughter Tilly. And it’s where the family were when the devastating fires swept through last month.
“We were actually very close to the Palisades fires,” Jonathan tells TV WEEK from LA, “and a couple of days in, the fire turned down Mandeville Canyon and actually came within a mile and a half of our house, so it was a particularly stressful time.”
Despite the fire being so near to them, Jonathan and his family didn’t evacuate.
“We were a block from the evacuation zone and most people around us left but we stuck it out. We stayed. But our car was packed, had everything ready to go. We didn’t get much sleep because we were going to bed at night not knowing if we were going to get the word to leave. And sadly, it turns out some people in Altadena who ended up perishing in the fire didn’t get those warnings. So in retrospect, it was probably silly that we stayed, but we did.”
Jonathan’s not quite sure why they did stay.
“I don’t know. We didn’t have anywhere else to go! And I guess we figured that we could flee if the time came.
“It was nerve-wracking, for sure.”
The 55-year-old, who was born and raised in Adelaide, has been living in the US for more than three decades, ever since giving up work as a doctor to follow his older brother Anthony into acting. But in recent years, he’s been spending more and more time back in Australia, hosting Australian Survivor, co-hosting Top Gear Australia and acting in shows like Strife.
Australian Survivor has been such a hit that two seasons will air this year, with the first, Brains V Brawn II, premiering this month. Jonathan’s role has become more challenging over the seasons, with players more willing to make big moves, sometimes even strategising during tribal council. He says players know that if they get to the end, they have to be able to prove they deserve to be there.
“The jury sometimes can be bitter, but that’s becoming less of a thing as the seasons go on,” he explains.
“At the end of the day, their respect for the game trumps everything, so they want to see that you’ve played the game to the best of your ability. And the only way you can prove that is through big moves that you can claim as your own.”
Even though Jonathan memorises “like, 40 or 50 questions” before each tribal council, he’s quite happy if things end up veering in a different direction.
“I actually love it when the players take over because I think that generates more interesting and more organic content than we can ever come up with. So I actually like it when it gets live. That’s actually fun.”
The two seasons of Australian Survivor set to air this year (the second one is Australia V The World) were filmed back-to-back in Samoa in the last few months of 2024, with just five days break in between. Jonathan decided to use those five days to fly to Sydney to shoot season two of Strife, where he plays Peter, the former boss of Asher Keddie’s character Evelyn.
“Everyone was like, ‘Oh my God, you’re crazy!’” he remembers with a laugh. “But compared to the pressure cooker nature of shooting Survivor, it was actually a bit of a vacation to go back and shoot Strife.
“I love working on that show. It was a dream job.”
Another dream job Jonathan scored recently was co-hosting Top Gear Australia with Beau Ryan and Blair Joscelyne. He describes making the show as “a wild adventure”.
“I drove an $11 million car across Italy. Where else do you get that kind of opportunity? I’m a huge fan of the format – watched it from day one – and I’m a gearhead, so it was kind of a fantasy come true.”
Being in such demand as a host and actor has meant that Jonathan has had to put on hold any plans of returning to work as a doctor.
“I did start studying again in COVID, and then I got busy with all these jobs – Top Gear, Strife and Survivor – and I’ve dropped it a bit at the moment,” he says. “But weirdly, it’s always in the back of my head. But I don’t know. I’m a bit old. I don’t know if there’d be a job available for me.
“I guess I just wanted to prove to myself that I could still do it.”
One thing Jonathan does know is that he wants to keep living in Los Angeles, despite parts of it currently looking “like a war zone”.
“Historically, we’ve had issues with fires for a long time, and earthquakes,” he says. “It just comes with the territory. That being said, obviously, LA has never had a situation like this before. Normally the fires are in the mountains and don’t encroach on urban areas. So this was a pretty unusual occurrence and I think it was largely driven by those hurricane-type winds that we had.
“This is home. I think some people probably don’t want to live here anymore, particularly if they got directly affected, but we’re still here and I’m pretty confident that they will rebuild those areas.
“LA will soldier on.”
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