Parvati Shallow has been on the competitive reality TV scene for almost 20 years. In that period, she played Survivor four times, appeared on The Traitors and nearly made it to the end of Deal or No Deal Island season 2.
Though DONDI is a complex strategic game, Parvati, 42, found it much less intense than its reality competitors.
“Deal or No Deal was like a luxury vacation because I had the people that I had to play with,” she told Us Weekly exclusively after her elimination. “I mean, I had someone who I trusted 100 percent, which is so rare, and then we had food and luxury accommodations. And multiple ways to win.”
Parvati aligned herself with Survivor Australia legend David Genat and Dickson Wong in an alliance they called The Family, while she also maintained a close relationship with Courtney “CK” Kim. Because the structure of Deal or No Deal Island forces competitors to often reveal their loyalties, Parvati found the lack of secrecy refreshing.
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“That’s different to Survivor and it’s different to Traitors, because Survivor and Traitors are the only other games I’ve played, and they’re intense, and it’s emotional, psychological, physical warfare in those games,” she explained.
That’s not to say DONDI is simple. David, 45, told Us Weekly in February that Survivor challenges are “easy” in comparison. While Parvati didn’t echo that exactly, she explained why the DONDI excursions are so much more complex.
“With Survivor, you gotta know how to do a puzzle, or you gotta do the endurance, or you gotta slog through this obstacle course. It’s more linear,” she said. “But with Deal or No Deal, I think of it like a sphere, so inside of the sphere you can carve your own path to victory. It was really nonlinear. It felt really fluid, really dynamic and very feminine for me.”
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It also forced Parvati, nicknamed the Black Widow, to change the way she played.
“I loved that part of it, and that’s why I decided to be open with the alliance that I was in,” she said. “I wasn’t lying in this game. I wasn’t conniving, like some of the people were saying that I was.”
Her strategy ultimately led to a fourth-place finish, with CK following her out later in the penultimate episode, which aired Tuesday, March 18.
The Deal or No Deal Island season 2 finale will air Tuesday, March 25, at 9 p.m. on NBC, where fans will see whether David or Alexis Lete will face the banker for a shot at more than $10 million. The finale will also stream on Peacock the next day.
