Pia faced a nasty backlash for turning on her ally Luke, with many lashing out at the reality TV star in her Instagram comments.
The 46-year-old star addressed the controversy after the episode aired, calling the game ‘brutal’.
‘I didn’t expect to have to make a decision that tore me apart like this but Survivor will do that to you,’ she confessed.
‘At the end of the day we are all out there playing to change our lives and Harry, Baden and I made a choice that was strategically right but morally painful. So send me all your snake emojis and know that I get it,’ she wrote on her Instagram account.
But Luke himself has been far more forgiving about Pia’s move. Speaking to 10 Daily, Luke described how he begged Pia to let him stay.
‘She could have then not written my name down on the parchment and I’m telling you if I went to fire, I would have blown Baden out of the water.
‘That’s one thing I was good at. I was good at fishing and I was good at fire. I tried to play it down a little bit but I could start fire from the tip of my fingers.
'I’m in Pia’s corner. You’ve got to separate the game from the emotions and we’ll have to wait and see if this pays dividends for her.'
Luke has been open about wanting to use the $500,000 prize money to help his three children. Both Luke’s sons are on the autism spectrum and his baby daughter – born just six weeks before Survivor started filming – has cystic fibrosis..
Fans have rushed to GoFundMe to help him out, with $85,000 already raised.