Parvati Shallow Reveals How Growing Up in a Commune Helped Her Win ‘Survivor’

Parvati Shallow didn’t become reality TV’s infamous “Black Widow” until she was declared  the “Sole Survivor” of “Survivor: Micronesia” in 2008. The season, which pitted returning fan-favorite players against a tribe of “Survivor” superfans, marked Parvati’s first return to the series after her debut on the 2006 cast of “Survivor: Cook Islands.”

On “Fans vs. Favorites,” Parvati’s all-female alliance, composed of legendary players like Amanda Kimmel and Cirie Fields, who similarly began the game on the “Favorites” tribe. Their alliance, known as the “Black Widow Brigade,” employed devious tactics, including flirting with male players, to dominate the competition with Shallow at its helm. Parvati has since been known as the competition series’ “Black Widow.”

Now, following appearances on “Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains,” “Survivor: Winners at War,” “The Traitors” Season 1, and “Deal or No Deal Island,” Parvati has revealed that her cutthroat gameplay was unwittingly motivated by her traumatic upbringing in a commune. 

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Parvati Opens Up About Her ‘Cult-Like’ Commune Childhood

In her upcoming memoir, “Nice Girls Don’t Win: How I Burned it All Down to Claim My Power,” Parvati not only unpacks being thrust into fame at 24-years-old when she first appeared on “Survivor,” but also her traumatic past, including her childhood spent living on a commune. 

Random House

The star, now 42, previously revealed that her parents had been devotees of Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati, a Hindu guru who gathered hundreds of followers to her Kashi Ashram commune in Sebastian, Florida. Shallow lived on the “cult-like” commune with her parents and three siblings until she was 9.

In “Nice Girls Don’t Win,” Shallow refers to her upbringing as “pure chaos,” though she has since revealed that surviving it prepared her well to lie, cheat, steal, and eventually flirt her way to a win on “Survivor.”

“Fawning is one of the most widely used survival strategies, and it’s just this sort of overt people-pleasing, overly complimentary kind of love bombing,” Parvati told US Weekly. “One of our basic needs is love and belonging, so if we experience a lack of that in childhood, we develop a hunger for it.”

Despite openly flirting with other contestants on “Fans vs. Favorites,” Shallow told Bustle, “I was completely unconscious to what I was doing. Highly unaware.”

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Parvati Responds to the Reception of Her Cutthroat Gameplay

Despite Parvati’s claims, it hasn’t spared the “Black Widow” from criticism for her cutthroat, “flirtatous” gameplay over the years. Fellow “Survivor” winner Ethan Zohn set the record straight in 2019, however, before the two competed against each other on “Winners at War.”

“If a guy makes social connections and controls votes with charm, he’s called strategic,” wrote Zohn in an email. “If Parvati does it, it’s ‘flirting’ or ‘manipulative.’ She’s a player. She’s a leader. She’s a strategist. She’s also warm, funny, and incredibly kind, and none of that negates her game – it enhances it.”

Zohn added that the “Survivor” fandom “still has blind spots about how it talks about strong women. And I think if people took a step back, they’d see that what Parvati did out there was redefine what a power player can look like.”

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Parvati’s gameplay was once again called into question during the finale of “Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains,” where she was able to secure a spot at Final Tribal Council thanks to her underhanded alliance with Russell Hantz, one of the most notorious “Survivor” villains. 

In an excerpt from her upcoming book, Shallow opened up about how the jury “hated” her for aligning with Hantz, and weren’t afraid to say it to her face. “Their words hit me like an assault, and I sat still on my stump, helpless to stop it – TV cameras trained on me like sniper rifles. All I could do was sit there, shut up, and take it. As each jury member spoke, I felt myself shrink until I was so small I was sure I’d disappeared. I was frozen – unable to think, move, or act. Incapable of doing anything,” wrote Shallow in the excerpt. 

Speaking with Bustle, Parvati revealed that she forged the alliance with Hantz because she “just wanted to be liked and included and accepted.” When it came to the jury’s comments, she added that they felt like a “character attack” as opposed to a critique of her game. 

Parvati Shallow’s debut memoir, “Nice Girls Don’t Win: How I Burned it All Down to Claim My Power,” hits bookstores nationwide on July 8 from Random House.