Once one of Australia’s youngest stars, Pia Miranda was wide-eyed and excitable when she first entered the media industry as the lead in Looking for Alibrandi more than 25 years ago. Looking back now, she says the wild ride has taught her one thing: stay grateful.
“I used to watch the TV WEEK Logie Awards and think, ‘Imagine going to that,’” Pia, 53, tells TV WEEK.
“I used to cut out the covers when they had the Logies special and put them on my wall. I never thought as a little Italian ballet dancer that going would have ever been a possibility, so I have got to make sure that I always stay grateful.”
Now, 26 years on, the seasoned actress has married musician Luke Hanigan and welcomed two children, Lily and James, while building an eclectic resume spanning Wentworth, Invisible Boys and Mustangs FC. But after years in a turbulent industry where the next job is never guaranteed, particularly for women, Pia has learned to diversify her skillset.
“I’ve never been an actor that’s worked consistently,” she explains. “When I was having kids, I started thinking there are definitely less roles for women in their 40s and 50s so what can I do to make my career better?
“It’s why I started doing more varied things like reality TV, because I’m a reality TV fan, and that’s actually made me really happy.”
It led her to Recipe of the Year, a series she hosts alongside chef and television personality Adam Liaw.
The seven-part series brings together 20 of the country’s best home cooks, each putting forward recipes close to their hearts, shaped by culture, family and flavour, all under the watchful eye of the Country Women’s Association. At the end of the series, one remarkable recipe will be crowned Australia’s Recipe of the Year.
TV combined with home cooking? Pia was interested
“They just sent me a little blurb about the show, and it sounded new, it sounded different,” Pia says.
“It sounded right up my alley because it’s about real home cooking and has a multicultural flair that celebrates Australia. Because I’m half very Australian, a lot of my family live in the country, and half Italian, it just seemed perfect for me.”
If Pia were cooking, her famous lasagne would be on the menu.
“Everyone thinks their lasagne is great, but my lasagne really is great,” she declares. “It’s a very Sicilian lasagne, so it’s quite different.”
Growing up half Sicilian and half Aussie wasn’t always easy, but now it is diversity that is celebrated not just on the show, but nationwide.
“In the 80s we got teased a lot,” Pia says. “Now everyone’s discovered Euro summer, and we’ve had a glow up.”
The show also made her reflect on beautiful moments around the table with her Italian grandparents, who inspired her connection with food, while prompting her to reassess how she cooks for her own Aussie tribe.
“Sometimes I get asked to write little recipes and I learned it’s really important to include people in country or regional Australia, like my family that lives somewhat remotely, because they don’t have access to fresh vegetables as freely as we do,” she explains. “So, putting in those alterations that could be done with frozen vegetables is really important.”
Speaking of tribes, the former 2019 Australian Survivor: Champions v Contenders winner believes her time at tribal council, and Adam’s time on MasterChef Australia where he rose to fame, is the ingredient to what made them such great hosts.
“When contestants were waiting to hear the voting, we weren’t two people that were completely separated from that experience,” she says. “I’d been there in tribal councils when they’d been voting people out and Adam had been there on MasterChef.
“It was a really nice difference about us as hosts that I didn’t predict that brought us closer to the contestants.”
Despite taking home $500,000 after winning Survivor, the experience wasn’t all glorious. It resulted in intense online bullying, something Pia says exposed a double standard around women and strategy.
“There’s a lot of bias against women when it comes to playing strategic games, I made a game move with two guys and they didn’t get one bad message and I got thousands. I think that speaks volumes. No one can really understand what a pile on feels like until you’ve been through it.”
Life away from the camera
When she is momentarily away from the acting and reality TV worlds, Pia is simply enjoying life in her 50s. She spends weekends doing reiki with her girlfriends and embracing the breaks between gigs.
“I enjoy just being me,” she states. “Going to yoga, having lunch with friends and hanging out with my kids. I love being a mum. When I’m not working I really do take time out to do pickups, drop offs, go to parties. I do have to go away for work a lot, so I really like to be invested in my home life when I’m here.”
“I’ve got a circle of friends, and we all do reiki and meditate together,” she adds. “It’s really beautiful and joyous.”
What’s next for Pia?
“I’m in the second half of my career and mostly what I’m hungry for is to just continuing to do work that means something to people and makes them happy,” Pia declares. “I try to keep a balance between me as a person and then my work life – it’s a 50-50 thing.
I don’t know what I’d do, but I can tell you I’ll never go back to Survivor again.”
It doesn’t, however, mean a comeback on Wentworth would be off the cards.
“I did stab myself in the eye with a pencil,” she says with a laugh of her partially blind character Jodie.
“But you never know when Jodie could come back.”
