‘Survivor’ star Parvati Shallow memoir delves into cancer, divorce, emotional affairs, queer sex

If you want the dirt on Survivor and The Traitors, Parvati Shallow dishes it in her new memoir Nice Girls Don’t Win: How I Burned It All Down to Claim My Power — that includes the juicy excerpt already released by Entertainment Weekly regarding her time on Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains.

But the book is about much more than that, dealing with even more drama off the island than on it — including growing up in a commune run by “a tyrannical female guru,” the tragic death of a sibling, a rocky marriage to a fellow Survivor alum (John Fincher), and then publicly coming out as queer (while dating comedian Mae Martin).

For the reality TV star, writing the memoir and delving into uncomfortable topics was a form of healing and emotional therapy. While Parvati describes the process of reliving some of the more painful moments from her past as “torture,” she also says it was part of her process of acceptance.

“I didn’t write the book to look good,” she tells EW. “There are so many embarrassing stories and stories that make me look bad in the book, and I wanted to share those to humanize myself, and for other people to have that permission to accept themselves too.”

EW spoke to Parvati about why she is telling her story now, the topics she didn’t include in the book, looking back at her younger self on TV, and why she returned to reality TV.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What made you want to write the book?

PARVATI SHALLOW: I think I’ve always known I’ve wanted to write a book. You have something in you when you’re young, and it just, like, doesn’t leave. And for me, it was this impulse to write a book. I didn’t know what the book would be, and I started writing a book multiple times throughout my life and it didn’t go anywhere. But once I found myself in my own apartment after I’d filed for divorce and I didn’t have my daughter for stretches at a time, a few days here, five days there, I had time and space to actually slow down enough and look at my life and be like, “Whoa, how did I get so wildly off track? How did I get here?”

I’m a student of yoga, meditation, different kind of personal growth and development practices, so I know enough to know that we repeat patterns from our childhood unconsciously. And I was like: I’ve never looked at my childhood. I’ve never examined my life. I’ve never slowed down. My brother had died maybe a year prior. And from there I was like, I just need to grieve. I need to really let myself feel. And I hadn’t done that.

So the book was a process for me to put the pieces of my life in place so I could see more clearly why I made the choices that I made so I could make different choices in the future. And then from there, it just became this big project and sort of a service project to the reader and for my daughter as well.

You put yourself out there in this book and tackle some pretty difficult moments. What was it like having to write about the stuff with your husband; specifically, the circumstances regarding that incident where he saw some messages on your phone, because I can’t imagine that was easy.

It was torture. It was its own form of torture writing this book. Survivor is hard, but I think writing the book was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and it spanned over the course of two and a half years. But I feel so much lighter now after having written it. It was like all this stuff that I didn’t want to look at, that I was avoiding was in my body. And so sitting down and writing it and then reliving some of that stuff and writing it in a way — it was then a story that was taken out of me and put onto a page.

You as a writer probably can relate to this in some way. And once it was out of me and on a page, I could look at it more objectively and less emotionally. And then editing it back and forth with my coach and reading it out loud to her every week was very therapeutic.  It just gave me the ability to claim my voice. I can use my voice. I can speak about things that are hard and emotional. I can share these things with other people and have a human connection with other people.

I have more acceptance for myself and the stuff that I went through. I have more acceptance for other people, and compassion for them because I do think we’re all just doing the best we can. And sometimes we hurt people and that’s hard. And also, it is such a big part of life to be able to repair these relationships, or not. This book gave me the power to now create my life from an authentic place inside me rather than making choices to please other people or to look good to someone else.

I didn’t write the book to look good. There are so many embarrassing stories and stories that make me look bad in the book, and I wanted to share those to humanize myself, and for other people to have that permission to accept themselves too.

What is the trade-off like in terms of the perks of being a public figure matched up against the lack of privacy and being part of an internet and social media news cycle — a social media news cycle that didn’t exist when you first started on Survivor?

It’s really tricky, especially right now having written a book that’s so personal and intimate. I had three years to write the book to process what I was going to say, to reflect on it, to edit it, to trim certain things. I didn’t put my whole life story in the book. I put select stories in the book for a reason. And so now going through the press to talk about my life is so tricky because I am like, “Okay, well I’m sharing this very personal memoir, and I’ve already shared so much personal stuff. Now how much more personal stuff do I have to share, and where’s the line and where’s the boundary?”

And I lean toward oversharing anyway. So I really have to pay attention when I’m having conversations with people. I just naturally share quite a bit about whatever’s happening in my life, and I have to reel that back in because I don’t want my personal life to become fodder for headlines necessarily. That’s not why I wrote the book.

What didn’t you write about? What were the type of things that felt off-limits or you thought about getting into but ultimately didn’t?

There are some relationships that I want to preserve and keep intact at this point. I have worked very hard to make my co-parenting relationship work with my daughter’s dad — so that one. I really was very thoughtful about the stories that I put in around that situation. And then some other stuff — like Survivor, CBS things. I was very thoughtful and considerate about certain relationships, keeping them kind of copacetic. I’m not here to write a burn-down, scorched-earth tell-all; that’s not what this book is. So I included things that I think were more my story, and then the other stuff, readers can read between the lines and make up their own ideas about what’s not in the book.

There was a time when you were done with reality TV, and I remember having conversations with you years ago about that. Why did you ultimately decide to go back for Survivor, Traitors, Deal or No Deal Island, Australian Survivor, and whatever is next?

I had stepped away for so long, and I was focused on something very different, which was having a baby and having a family. And it’s hard to go out and play these games with a kid. It’s completely different for me to play them now as a mother than it was for me as a single girl doing my first three seasons of Survivor. I have to set up so much childcare and then think about the emotional toll it takes to leave my child for that long.

But when I decided to go back and play season 40, I mean, ultimately it came down to two things: one was to have this sense of family with Survivor. It feels like they’re my extended family. Dysfunctional as it may be, it’s still family.  And so I was like, I don’t want to miss this big celebration. I’d always said, “I’m not going back unless they do an all-winners.” And then they did the all-winners, and I was like, “I just had a baby, I don’t want to do it.”

But also, we didn’t have any money. The situation is what it is. And you can read about it in the book in detail, but we didn’t have enough money for me to have any sense of safety around, “How are we going to pay our rent and take care of our kid?” So I went back for money as well. But it was both of those things, and I think that’s something that I wanted to include in the book, too. I wanted to talk about money because I won a million dollars when I was 25, and I think a lot of people think like, “Oh, if that happens, you’re set for life.” And I just made some atrocious choices with money.

So I struggled with that for a long time, and I also wanted to put that in the book. I think it’s a taboo topic. A lot of the things I talk about in the book are sort of off-limits taboo topics like cancer, divorce, money, death, emotional affairs, and queer sex. There’s just a lot of stuff in there that I think maybe will make readers feel uncomfortable. And I did that on purpose. I really want it to be an embodied experience for people who are reading it to notice how they feel inside themselves as they read it.

It’s interesting hearing you talk about why you came back for Survivor. You could have stepped away again after that, but then you kept doing these other shows. Was that a financial pull as well?

The Traitors just sounded cool, and Alan Cumming is the host and I was like, Yes! And I’m just so glad I did, because it really did burst the door open for me to go on a different network to connect with a different fan base and kind of have this crossover of Bravo fans now watching Survivor for the first time. And now that I am doing these drag shows all over the place, it’s fans of Traitors and fans of Survivor coming together in one big room for a big party and a celebration and it’s just so joyful. So Traitors brought me a lot of joy, and I’m really glad I did it. And Deal or No Deal was so fun.

What is it like having your younger self immortalized forever on streaming services? I imagine there are good and bad aspects of that.

I developed so much compassion and love for my younger self through writing this book. And also, I look at [daughter] Alma and I want her to feel like it’s okay to embarrass herself. I embarrassed myself so much when I was younger and I did it on an international scale. Thank God my Survivor audition tape is lost to the archives because it’s so deeply embarrassing. It’s mortifying and I really hope it never resurfaces.

I’ve kind of gotten used to embarrassing myself, but I look back at myself at a young age and I’m like, God, I was so full of life! I was so joyful, and I love that about myself. I was really courageous. I love adventure. I make the best out of any situation, whether I’m doing it at my own expense or just enjoying something with the people around me. And it was such an adventure going off and playing Survivor, so I wouldn’t change that for anything.

I think it’s harder now for young people to do reality television in this climate. With social media being as it is, the feedback is so instant. At least I had a little bit of a gap, and then the feedback that I got in it really intensified for season 16 because it was just so sexist in that era, and women were so objectified, and I was doing that to myself also. So it was like a kind of a little like the stars aligned for disaster at that point in my life. But I just wouldn’t go back and change it. It’s made me more able to put myself out in the world and take risks and also fail publicly. I think that’s an okay thing to do. I can survive public failure and public humiliation, which is a powerful skill.

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Nice Girls Don’t Win: How I Burned It All Down to Claim My Power will be released July 8 from Random House and is now available for pre-order.