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 Pia Miranda spoke publicly, nearly five years ago, she had just learned she was $500,000 richer.
The Looking for Alibrandi star had won the sixth season of Australian Survivor, but despite the huge cash prize, she admitted feeling “mixed emotions” after a season that revealed a side of her personality viewers didn’t always appreciate.
Miranda had made strategic moves in the game, eliminating popular contestants, and ultimately triumphed amid a strong backlash from some fans.
“As far as my career goes, I definitely felt like I had more to lose than gain from this,” she said. “Bloody hell, I don’t think I’m gonna work as an actor again, so the money will probably just get me by.”
Fast forward to 2025, and Pia Miranda is talking about her supporting role in the new Stan drama series Invisible Boys, streaming from Thursday.
Adapted from Holden Sheppard’s award-winning novel, the 10-part series, created and directed by Nicholas Verso, follows a group of gay teens in the remote town of Geraldton, Perth. Set in 2017, it contrasts the nationwide celebrations of the same-sex marriage plebiscite with the harsh realities faced by students like Charlie (Joseph Zada) and Zeke (Aydan Calafiore), who live in a community hostile to their identities.
Miranda shines as Zeke’s conservative, homophobic, casually racist mother Anna, a role she admits was particularly “intense” to play.
“I figured that if I didn’t find some part of her to understand, audiences would only see her as a cartoonish villain,” Miranda explained. “I didn’t want that, because people with these views exist, and we need to see her as a real person to spark meaningful conversations.”
“So I spent a lot of time exploring the ‘whys’: Why is she like this? Why does she think this way? What is she trying to achieve?”
While not overly explicit, the show is honest about teen sexuality, featuring plenty of on-screen self-exploration. Poor Zeke often finds himself embarrassed by his mother Anna barging in with lectures at the worst moments.
“Oh my God,” Miranda laughs when the scenes are mentioned. “It really captures the awkwardness of being a teenager. There was a lot of body lotion involved.”
The young cast are all impressive, but Aydan Calafiore as Zeke stands out, portraying a high-achieving teen who struggles to meet his parents’ expectations. Miranda says working with him was energizing.
“I’ve been doing this a long time – I’m old and tired, let’s not lie – so it was wonderful to be around this youthful energy,” she says. “We had such a great rapport. It’s really his first big role, and he was so confident and skilled – he even elevated my performance.”
One small quibble with Miranda’s scenes as Anna is her age—something that has followed her since playing high schooler Josie Alibrandi at 27. Fans might wonder if Anna could realistically have both a teenager and a young adult as sons.
For the record, she can: Miranda will turn 52 in June.
“Ageing on screen can be confronting … I don’t always see what everyone else sees. 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.”
Turning back to her Survivor win, Miranda recalls that in 2019 she worried her controversial reality TV stint might have damaged her acting career.
“I copped a lot of shit for it. I was probably in the middle of thinking, ‘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 admits.
The $500,000 prize from Survivor turned out to be a real “lifesaver,” arriving just before the Covid pandemic brought much of the creative industry to a halt.
“I’m a freelancer, my husband (former Lo-Tel singer Luke Hanigan) works in TV, and we barely worked for two years,” Miranda explains. “We usually earn a normal wage—probably less than normal in Australia—but all that dried up for two years. That money was life-changing; it helped us get through COVID while still breathing.”
She did manage to enjoy a bit of fun with the winnings before the pandemic necessities—like toilet paper and RAT tests—took over. Miranda and her husband took their two kids to Disneyland, a trip she says was totally worth it.
“It was amazing! …Worth every death threat,” she laughs, showing she hasn’t lost any of her Survivor fighting spirit.