Parvati Shallow fought until the bitter end on The Traitors season 2. Once she was clocked as a Traitor after Peter Weber pulled off his master plan, Parvati did everything she could to stay in the game, including reluctantly going against fellow Traitor Phaedra Parks at the episode 8 banishment where she was finally sent home. In an exclusive interview with Hollywood Life, Parvati explained how her and Phaedra’s relationship went from their tense episode 4 exchange (“No one likes you, Parvati”) to them being “sad” that they had to turn against each other to survive.
“None of us ever wanted to do that. Once I realized that Phaedra was playing really loyal to the Traitors, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m not gonna go after her. She’s keeping me safe,’ ” the four-time Survivor player said the day after her elimination episode. “So it was super sad.”
Looking back on when Phaedra went after her for trying to target the Real Housewives click, Parvati admitted that she was “surprised” the Bravo star was so upset with her when they had words in the Traitors turret in front of Dan Gheesling.
“I was like, ‘Oh, I think she’s really mad,’ ” Parvati said. “Cause Phaedra is a really good actor. She’s like, ‘I’m not an actor.’ Like, we all know you’re an actor — and you’re really good at it! Own that. But she was in character the entire time, even in the turret. So I couldn’t break her.”
“It was dramatic,” Parvati added about the fight. “Dan was so freaked out and stunned. It was a back and forth between Phaedra and I for maybe a few minutes. I was like, ‘Okay, I gotta let her know that she’s safe. I have to just field this attack and not react to it and diffuse this.’ I’m very good at that anyways. It’s like water off my back. She can say nobody likes me, but that’s just how she handles conflict. It’s personal attacks. And I know people like that.”
Parvati and Phaedra were ultimately able to move on from their brief fight to continue killing off the Faithfuls, and Parvati chalks that up to Phaedra’s experience on Bravo. “I don’t hold it against her, she didn’t hold it against me, and we moved forward. I think that’s sort of the Housewives way,” she said.
Parvati also explained how she feared the Bravo alliance from the very beginning of the game, and always knew that they would protect Phaedra if she ever came under suspicion as a Traitor. “That was like my goal with getting a couple of the Housewives out of the house, because they do have a very tight bond,” Parvati said. “I think they recognize something in each other and they have a camaraderie and they just have a respect for each other and what they have to go through.”
As for Phaedra’s decision to recruit Kate Chastain as a Traitor at the end of episode 8, Parvati confirmed that she would’ve done the exact same thing if she was in Phaedra’s spot.
“I told Phaedra to recruit Kate. I would’ve recruited Kate. We were in the turret, and I was like, ‘If we get a chance to recruit someone, it has to be Kate,’ ” Parvati said. “Because she came in last. You can create suspicion around her — even if there isn’t any right now. And she has been standing up for Phaedra so much at the roundtable. It was really smart of Phaedra to recruit Kate. I would’ve done the same.”
New episodes of The Traitors drop Thursdays at 9 pm ET on Peacock.