This is a LONG article with a ton of photos and a shocking surprise guest. Natalie Bolton!
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Parvati Proves Nice Girls Don't Win

Story by Tobias Hess / Photography by Moni Haworth / Styling & creative direction by Malcolm Mammone

Feb 01, 2024

In a time when the internet will froth itself into a rabid state of “Mother! Mother! Mother!” over just about anything, this was all too much. I had idolized Parvati Shallow — Survivor legend and perennial cool girl — since I was a child, so I was understandably awestruck as I watched her from the photoshoot’s sidelines, posing languidly on an ATV, squinting in quintessential fashion, her shining brunette frock of hair waving cooly in the desert wind. I turned slyly to Malcolm Mammone, the shoot’s stylist and the only other superfan on set, and whispered, “We’re staring at the sun.”

During her first stint on Survivor in 2006, Shallow entered the collective zeitgeist as a bubbly waitress/boxer/free spirit from Georgia. Most notable for her infectious laugh and devious smile, Shallow made for good, if not groundbreaking, television. It was during her next two seasons, though, that Parvati Shallow — the legend, the character — was etched into the stones of icons. On Survivor: Micronesia, Shallow linked up with a team of women so memorable that the looming threat of an “all-women” alliance became a hallmark trope of the show. Along with fellow Survivor hall-of-famers — Amanda Kimmel, Cirie Fields, Natalie Bolton — Shallow and her squad (later dubbed the “Black Widow Brigade”) used flirtation and charm to massacre every male contestant on the island. Voting each man out with delicious, slippery tact, Shallow came to personify the female Id-monster of early-aughts reality TV: the charming, beautiful, smiling girl who will kiss you one night and slit your throat the next. She won, and earned, the million-dollar prize, but unsurprisingly, 2008 America wasn’t quite ready for our subversive anti-heroine. She faced constant and vicious backlash from the public.

On her next season, the series-best Heroes vs. Villains, Shallow cemented her status as the latter, surviving a season that played out like a horror movie and making it to the finale. She didn’t win this time. That victory went to another Survivor queen, Sandra Diaz-Twine, but despite that loss and the closure it should’ve brought, Diaz-Twine has consistently harped on Shallow. In a now-deleted Facebook post from January 2023, Diaz-Twine wrote: “For those Parvati lovers out there, go spend 2 hours on Survivor with her and see how much you like her then! She’s not that nice.”

So what? Shallow reflected to me, proudly, buoyantly: “Nice girls don’t win Survivor.”

When it was announced that Shallow and Diaz-Twine were returning to TV together for Peacock’s The Traitors, there was a euphoric response from the Survivor-intelligentsia. The Traitors, which is essentially an elaborate game of Mafia played by reality TV stars in a Scottish castle, was the perfect, campy context for our two favorite Survivor divas to return to battle. That they would be joined by Real Housewives, Big Brother notables and a Drag Race fan-fav, made it all feel almost too good to be true. Thankfully, it was terrifically, iconically happening.

The internet lost its mind over The Traitors cast, but that excitement felt minuscule when compared to the pure euphoria that was expressed when Shallow made another announcement. In January, she revealed that she was dating superstar comedian Mae Martin. “We’re here. We’re queer. Happy new year,” she shared to the rapturous applause of 60K likes. That Shallow, the platonic conception of a 2000s straight girl reality star, was now reintroducing herself as a mom standing firmly in her queerness: it felt like all of the cultural winds of the past 20 years were channeling through her. The Survivor community let out one collective gasp.

This announcement also prompted a re-reading of Shallow's work through a queer lens, most notably her relationship with Natalie Bolton, her compatriot from the “Black Widow Brigade.” In a scene that many queer survivor scholars have referred to as their “Roman empire,” Bolton asked Shallow how her flirtatious spirit shows up in the bedroom.. The two were coy and close before, so the salacious question beckoned many-a-fan fiction on the pair’s alleged affair.

Today, PAPER, Shallow and Bolton are here to answer all your questions. Returning to the press for the first time since her time on Survivor, Bolton proudly joins Shallow for her first glossy photo shoot. The duo, who have remained good friends since their time on the island, still have the same carefree, giddy banter they had in 2008. Settling up in bikinis, dousing each other in mud, laughing and reminiscing: the girls are still girling. And though the lore is strong, it’s just that: folk tales, Bolton says. “I knew Parvati was going to get my vote [to win the game],” she remembers about that question she asked at the final tribal council.. “So why not make her work for it and have some fun?”

Lovers? No. Dear friends? Yes. Icons? Always.

PAPER chatted with Shallow the day after her photoshoot in California about the trials and tribulations of reality TV, The Traitors and the enduring gift of queerness.

The following interview was edited for length and clarity, and contains spoilers about the first four episodes of The Traitors Season 2.

So the last time you were on TV was for Survivor: Winners at War [which shot in 2019]. Why return to television?

Well, Winners at War was a tricky one. I had just had a baby and I said, “No, I would never do Survivor again, but if they ever did an all-winners season, I would probably do that because the FOMO would be too intense for me.” But the timing was really bad. I wasn't in a good head space. I was sleep deprived. I hadn’t exercised in a while, and I just was out of the game and super rusty. So when I played, I was like, Okay, I'm just doing this because this is my extended family and it feels like a whack family reunion that I just can't miss. And I don't think I'll win this game, because there's such a huge target on me and I'm so beat from having this baby, but I'm gonna do this anyways. I had a very different experience watching Survivor: Winners at War, because it had been nearly 10 years since I last played Survivor. And when I was on Survivor the first three times, I was in my twenties. It was a very different era in television. And I received a lot of backlash and negative feedback from critics, from viewers, from the media, so my experience watching that was pretty uncomfortable.. So now, 10 years later, playing Winners at War and receiving all this love on social media was very different for me. I was like, Oh my God! This is a whole different experience. I didn't do as well in that game, which was interesting, but the feedback and the love that I got from the fans was really surprising and healing for me. So something clicked for me that this is a very different era of [television]. People have now had time to watch my arc as a character on Survivor. People now wanted me to do well, and they were cheering for me. And I was like, Oh, this is it!

Why The Traitors?

So The Traitors called me last year to go on the first season with Cirie [Fields who she played with on Survivor: Micronesia]. Cirie and I were chatting about it, and I was going through my divorce, and we hadn't settled on custody, and I was like, “I'm not ready to go do a game show. I'm in the middle of this really hard thing right now.”

But it stuck in my head. First of all: Alan Cumming is magical. He's a magical unicorn in a Scottish kilt and I adore him. And I'm a big fan of Romy and Michele's High School Reunion', so if you have a chance to hang out with Alan Cumming, you say yes to that. And then I watched Cirie and was like, This is so cool. It's a very different game than Survivor: there are the outfits and the theatrical elements of it. This is so camp and so fun.Survivor is so serious and so suffer-y. This is playful and this would be an evolution for me. It seemed like it wasn't a personal drama show. The Traitors is like theater meets reality meets gameplay, and it's going to challenge me in a new way.

At the shoot, you mentioned Cirie told you before you went on that it was a “cakewalk.” I love the idea of you guys talking about that as these two gameplay veterans with this very unique mutual understanding.

Yeah, I called her after I watched her season [of The Traitors, which she won]. I was like, "Oh, my god! Congrats! You nailed that. How was it for you?" And she said, "Cakewalk. You would sail through it." But I was like, I don't think it would be that easy for me. Cirie has this ability to be perceived as a non-threat. She's really warm and motherly and people gravitate towards her. She's super cunning and strategic, but people tend to overlook that because she makes them feel held, included and loved. And she's cool; she's not trying to get you to like her.

You're obviously a strategic mastermind, but what about you is different from Cirie?

I think Cirie is more of a covert threat, and I'm more of an overt threat. People see me, and they're like, “Gotta watch out for her. Don't trust her.” It's the double-edged sword of doing the Eric immunity idol [move in Survivor] and then winning Survivor. Because Cirie was involved in that move, but she didn't win, so she doesn't have the same amount of public eye on her. So for me, it's like, Amazing I won, but now anytime I play a reality game show, people are instantly threatened by me.