Interview with former Atlantan Parvati Shallow, part of ‘Survivor: Heroes v. Villains’

Both times after she left the show, she said she’d never do it again. Too taxing physically and mentally.

But here she is back again.

“I think it’s just my insane competitive spirit,” she said in a phone interview last week from her home in the Los Angeles area. (She boxes and competes in triathlons.) “I honestly never thought they’d ask me to come back or want me to come back. I figure everyone would be sick of me!”

Alas, there's another $1 million at stake. And she gets to play against some of the more colorful characters of the past 19 seasons including "Boston Rob" Mariano, Rupert Boneham, Ben "Coach" Wade and Jerri Manthey.  Sadly, nobody from season one is on the show, although winner Richard Hatch wanted to. (He was still under house arrest for tax evasion at the time.)

Your favorite cast members on this season's "Survivor: Heroes v. Villians" (pick up to three)

“It would have been cool to play with Richard Hatch,” she said. “We would have gotten along. He’s kind of my style of gameplay.”

Parvati knows she’ll be an instant target because she has won before and that she can’t just rely on sex appeal and a flirty nature to get past these veterans. But she’s not worried. (Okay, she could be just making herself look good because she can’t tell me what actually happened.)  “I have a lot of confidence. I knew going in I could navigate the treacherous waters of ‘Survivor.’ ”

And she wasn’t insulted being placed on the “villains” team. “They put a lot of big personalities on the villain tribe,” she said, stating the obvious. “I just think I have a good personality.” Her family, most of whom still live metro Atlanta, laughed when they heard how she was pegged. “I’ve always been picked as the troublemaker,” she said. “The bad seed. I’m a little mischievous.”

Parvati said it’s human nature for people to forget or minimize the bad parts of their lives. And she thinks that’s how she thinks about her past “Survivor” experiences. “You wipe out the pain and trauma,” she said. “I went in thinking this will be a great time.”

The Samoa beach CBS placed them in, she said, was far less pleasant than Cook Islands. “It was tense. We had a tough island. I call it Death Trap Island!”

Interestingly, Russell Hantz, the consummate villain from season 19, was an unknown quantity to the other 19 contestants when he showed up because nobody had seen the new season yet. "I thought he was a staff member at first," Parvati said.  She said she thinks the very fact he was an unknown was a "huge advantage, especially watching his season now. People once they got there were already pointing out threats. We had no idea who he was."

During her times when she’s not doing “Survivor,” she does not hang out with alums. “The way I deal with re-entry into society is to really pull back from ‘Survivor,’ ” she said. “I pursue other ventures. I don’t go to Survivor reunion events. I don’t have any real strong relationships with anybody I didn’t play the game with.”

Parvati used some of her 2008 winnings to mentor girls to box with multiple branches in California. She is also planning a wellness, pilates and yoga studio. “I never wanted to have a 9 to 5 job,” she said. “The corporate world is not for me. I excel when I’m dropped on a secluded island and play a game with a bunch of monkeys for one million dollars!”

The toll the show takes is intense, she noted. “You starve for 39 days. You’re vitamin deficient. You get parasites. It takes all the nutrients out of your body. It eats away at your muscle. My hair was still falling out a year afterwards.” For a month after returning, she said she had zero energy. “I sat on the couch and stuffed my face,” she said. Her post-”Survivor” foods of choice: her dad’s special granola and quesadillas with guacamole. Oh, and Coldstone Creamery ice cream.

And for people who think “Survivor” is a good way to diet, it’s not. She said many people gain back all the weight plus five pounds because your body is protecting itself from that ever happening again.

Nonetheless, she thinks 90 percent of the game is mental. That’s why some folks who don’t appear to be in physically good shape can win because they have strong mental resilience. Her best challenges, she said, were the mental endurance types–the ones where you have to balance on a small log for hours at a time, for instance. The toughest part is pivoting in many challenges from the physical part to the mental portion. “We just dug up sandbags,” she said. “Then you have to do a puzzle. Why?”

Would she ever do “Big Brother”? “Never in a million years,” she said, with a laugh. “I’d go way too stir crazy. I can’t even watch it. It bores me.”

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