One of the most divisive moves of Australian Survivor 2025 so far happened during the March 10 episode, when Zara Callianiotis pressured Laura Darras to reveal her Tribe Swap advantage and then reaped the benefits by joining the new Brawn tribe.
Shortly before the new Brains tribe headed to face Jonathan LaPaglia at Tribal, Laura found an advantage that revealed whoever was voted out that night wouldn’t be eliminated but instead sent to the other team.
Laura had also formed a new alliance with Zara and OG brawn members Kate Gloufchis and Morgan McLeod called Girls Gone Wild, and they had a secret plan to target Jesse Noonan. However, with the new twist in play, Laura wanted to be voted out so that she could join OG Brains players who she’d formed strong connections with.
What ensued was chaos, with Laura first revealing the advantage to Zara and then telling the whole new Brains team about it at Tribal, after Zara told her she’d be “deserting her like a rat” if she left.
THEN, Zara spun the votes in her favour and flounced off to the new Brawn tribe, leaving a very bitter-looking Laura behind. However, despite heading back to some of her strongest connections, like Karin Gunatilake and Alexander “AJ” Antonios, Zara said she didn’t want Laura to reveal the advantage at all.
“My original thought when we found that clue was, let’s stick with what we had planned. Let’s send Jesse over there because the next morning, when we all go out onto the mat, all the old Brawn will see each other, and it would be pretty evident that people had flipped,” she told Chattr.
Zara added that she thought by keeping the advantage a secret and staying with the plan of voting for Jesse, she and Laura would be able to test out their Girls Gone Wild alliance and see if Kate and Morgan unheld their end without any consequences.
Does Zara feel bad about leaving Laura behind?
Zara told Chattr that she was fairly certain that the new Brains tribe would choose to send her to the new Brawn tribe, once the advantage was revealed.
“I had actually built really great relationships with the guys over there, with PD [Paul Dee], Ben Bylett and Jesse, and I knew that Myles [Kuah] being in my alliance of The Graduates, he would want to send me back to our other people.
“So once I knew that it was going to be a pitch between Laura and I had a feeling it was going to be me going,” she explained.
Zara thought Laura would understand the move and wanted to continue working with her once they made Merge.
“It was going to be a roll of the dice to try and get Laura back on my side after that happened. I think that you have to look at it and think, would I do that to someone in my real life? Absolutely not. But, I think Survivor is every man for himself.”
“Every move that you make, you have to think about whether or not that’s going to get you further in the game. And basically, every move you make, you are burning some kind of bridge. So then you have to weigh up all of the options and work out if you’re going to be able to rebuild that bridge.”
Zara said she took into account that her bold move might annoy Laura’s close ally Logan Johannisen, who’s on the New Brawn tribe, but said that she had to do what was best for her own game.
“I definitely weighed up the option of whether or not Logan would be happy with me,” she explained.
“But, at that stage, I desperately wanted to get back over there to see what was going on with The Graduates. I could sense on the mat [at challenge], that AJ and Karin were having some conflicts, so I felt desperate to get back over there as quickly as possible to try and smooth that over before Merge came.”
Will Zara’s move pay off? Or will Logan and Laura turn on her? We can’t wait to find out!
Australian Survivor airs at 7pm on Sundays and 7:30pm on Mondays and Tuesdays on Channel 10 and 10Play.
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