The Traitors ‘Mistress of Murder’ Parvati Shallow Tells All

(Warning: Spoilers ahead.)

It’s not often The Traitors fans are this devastated to see a Traitor go home. For weeks, Survivor legend Parvati Shallow has ruled the screen alongside her fellow mistress of murder, Real Housewives of Atlanta alum Phaedra Parks. Parvati started out the game as a Faithful, but after her recruitment to the dark side of the castle, she went into full villain mode, donning her “predatory headbands” and sizing everyone up with her icy stare. Has anyone in reality television history ever made villainy look this fun?

Parvati was a shrewd tactician with an undefeated bullshit detector, but alas, it was not enough. On Thursday night, the Faithfuls finally sent her home, marking their second successful banishment in the game. Now, Phaedra is all alone, unless she successfully seduces her fellow Bravo-lebrity Kate Chastain to join her team. But what’s next for Parvati, and what does she think of how it all went down? And also, how annoyed is she that Big Brother winner Dan Gheesling basically screwed up the Traitors’ game? The Daily Beast’s Obsessed caught up with her after Thursday’s episode to unfurl her true feelings about her banishment, former Bachelor Peter Weber’s shady maneuver, and all the juicy details we missed off-screen.

So, last week, Phaedra called out your “ice princess” attitude and intimidating glare. Was that a persona you were putting on, or was it an involuntary response to holding so much back?

Yeah, I think that’s what it was—I had so much emotion and adrenaline coursing through me every single moment of this game. The lights are hot, the rooms are closed, there’s nowhere to go. And my survival strategy, my go-to, is flight. Like, I want to get out of there at every moment. So I’m fighting my own self every time I have to sit still at the breakfast table, at the banishment table.

I didn’t even know that I made that face, and now I’m well aware.

It was so funny watching Pilot Pete trying to work with you again this week. I saw some people commenting that it looked like he was about to kiss you. Could you feel him pouring on the charm?

We were both doing the same thing to each other, so I was just matching his intensity. I already knew that I was going to let some emotion show because it was probably gonna be my last day. So I was like, “This is all I have—I have no other move to make. So I’m just gonna see if I can appeal to people’s emotions.”

When Peter and I were sitting in the kitchen and he’s looking at me with his sincere, puppy-dog Bachelor eyes, I’m like, “Alright. I’m gonna cry. I’m gonna pull on the heartstrings. We’re both gonna do this to each other.” It did feel like this sort of cat-and-mouse game.

Can you cry on command? Because in that scene and especially your conversation with former Parliament member John Bercow, it really looked like you’d been crying.

No, I was crying. It was really hard. It was an emotional journey, playing Traitors. It felt like emotional warfare, and it felt like I had to hold all that in and cover that. So the only time I could release it was if I gave myself permission. If I was like, “OK, I’m allowed to be vulnerable.” Because it didn’t feel safe for me to be vulnerable. It didn’t feel safe for me to show my emotion.

It kind of gave me the ick to be crying and emotional and sharing a personal story, and then also have that be under the umbrella of, “This as a strategy.”

That makes sense; it would be easier to be emotional when it’s from a real fear of going home. Obviously, there are hours and hours of footage that don’t make the cut in this show. I wondered, can you think of anything that happened offscreen that changed the course of the game or that viewers might’ve missed?

I think at the banishment table, what was happening when Dan went home and when I went home that you didn’t see was John would kind of sum up the discussion. He would say, “All right, we’ve heard everyone, and this is the Mistress of Murder and the Duchess of Deception. She is the one that we need to stick to our original plan and get her.” It would kind of galvanize the votes one way.

My banishment could have swung to Phaedra. It really could have. C.T. could have gone that way; Sandra could have gone that way. But I think because John did this summation, and he kind of got people sort of all locked in, that’s his job. He was the Speaker of the House. He did that for a living, and he was really good at it. So the editing kind of cut up his speech a bit differently, and you didn’t really see that it made a huge impact at the banishment table.

You mentioned Sandra. What were your interactions like in the castle? We don’t really see you two interacting on screen too much.

We didn’t have very much time to interact; we kind of avoided each other. But I felt like Sandra and I had each other’s backs. Like, I wasn’t going to murder her and she wasn’t coming after me.

She would slip me information here and there, like when we were putting food on our plates for dinner. It felt very Survivor-y with us, where we just had an unspoken kind of pact that we were good.

I also wondered, on a scale of one to 10, how annoyed were you with Dan for trying to murder Bergie even though you called it from the beginning that Peter was messing with you guys in claiming to have the shield?

Wildly annoyed. Is there something higher than 10? The highest I can be—so annoyed, Because that was when the tides changed. That was when we lost our voting completely. He thought he was better than he was in the game. So I was like, “Oh, God, and if I had just stood my ground stronger in the turret…”

But Dan was so convinced that it wasn’t a lie. It was like, “Fine, whatever.” I was so tired by then that I was like, “Fine, kill Bergie, I don’t care. Let’s go home.” And that was when it all changed. They got all three of us because Dan threw Phaedra under the bus at that point.

If you could have your pick of other games, other reality shows, which would you choose to pop into next?

Dancing With the Stars.

Very nice.

I would love to do that show. Maybe I’ll talk to Maks [Chermansky, a former dance pro on Dancing with the Stars] and see if he has an in for me.

Also, where did your idea for the headbands come from? You don’t wear them normally, do you?

I do not wear headbands in real life, no. It was a character that I was playing. I wanted to come out and be campy, because Traitors is so campy. I wanted to play this game and have fun with it. The character I embraced was Blair Waldorf. I don’t have a closet full of headbands.

My last question before I let you go is just, how terrible was that cabin mission with all the bugs?

I was terrified. I get really claustrophobic, and in that tunnel, the lights would go off. There were people in front of me and people behind me. There’s nowhere to go. Like, I’m already telling you how hard it is for me to sit still in the breakfast room, but I’m in this tunnel, and there’s bugs falling on us and rats.

The only way I made it through that challenge was because I found Sandra in the rat room. I just was like, “I’m gonna stay here until everyone is out of this tunnel and until I have a free and clear path out.” But Sandra was so unfazed. She was just like, chilling in the rat room. We’re trying to figure out how to get the gold out of that puzzle, and I was like, “Great. I’m just gonna hook into her sense of calm, and I’m gonna trust that everything’s gonna be OK.” But I was really freaked out.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.