‘Survivor’ gave Parvati Shallow a cutthroat reputation. She’s learned to stop judging herself.

“I love a good villain,” Parvati Shallow tells me from her couch as we’re connected on Zoom. “Everyone has the capacity to lie. Everyone has the capacity to be mean or bad or cutthroat.” Despite the bright smile and warm personality that I see throughout our conversation for Yahoo’s Unapologetically series, I know that she knows from experience.

Shallow was just 23 when she made her reality television debut nearly 20 years ago on Survivor: Cook Islands, swiftly becoming known for her good looks and flirtatious personality. In her first return to the series for Survivor: Micronesia — Fans vs. Favorites, her lore grew. She was labeled the “Black Widow” and leader of the season’s all-female alliance, the “Black Widow Brigade,” where she encouraged other women to use sensuality to their advantage in the game. “Taking out the guys by flirting with them and making them love me and then slitting their throats,” is how she explains it to me. It led her to win the season, but also to garner a bad reputation.

“The culture of that time was very sort of slut-shamey. People had a negative opinion of me and I internalized it,” she says. “I didn’t know myself. I had no sense of self that anchored me to my values, what I stand for. So I was very easily influenced by other people’s opinions of me.”

Now, she couldn’t care less. As a 42-year-old mom, divorcée and author of the new memoir Nice Girls Don’t Win: How I Burned It All Down to Claim My Power, Shallow feels the most confident she’s ever felt because she finally knows who she is. Here, she explores what therapy, motherhood and life experience have to do with it.

The Parvati Shallow interview

How would you describe this current era of your life?

This is the most accepting I have been of myself and the best I have known myself. It’s kind of the height of my inner radiance era, and that exudes outward. I look at myself in pictures and I like how I look. I feel like I look better now than I did 20 years ago, and I think it’s a testament to the work that I’ve done on getting to really like myself and appreciate me for me.

How does that shift in self-acceptance affect how you see your younger self?

I’m only now connected to the girl I was 20 years ago because I have done the work. I look back and realize, Oh my God, she was such a baby. She had no idea what she was getting into. She said “yes” to an adventure that was well beyond anything she had ever experienced before in her life. And then, you know, really hammed it up for the camera.

I think I used to judge myself for that ’cause I got a lot of criticism and a lot of backlash when the show came out. Now, I can accept myself more holistically because I’ve integrated all of those parts of me.

You’ve been on four seasons of Survivor, and a season of both Traitors and Deal or No Deal Island. Do you see a difference between your real self and your on-camera persona?

It’s always me [onscreen], but it’s me inside the context of a game with very specific rules. So when I play Survivor, I play with whatever skills I have naturally developed over the course of my life through being in a sorority, being a bartender and a waitress, being a boxer in an arena in Hollywood, knowing how to perform and knowing how to compete. It’s an arena where the rules are to bring people in, get really close to them and then if you’re not intending to take them all the way to the end with you, you gotta lie to them, you gotta backstab them, you gotta get them out of the game.

Hence, your reputation for being cutthroat. In the book, you tie that part of your personality to being raised in an ultra-spiritual Hindu commune in Florida. What’s the connection?

When we left the commune, I was 9 years old. My parents essentially were refugees. They had no friends, no community, and they had to start a life from scratch with two young kids. We were in survival mode, and that’s been my default mode of operating.

We come up with these strategies that help us do life when we’re kids, and they keep operating even when we become adults. I realized I was just creating my life unconsciously from those early childhood coping mechanisms, and it was no longer working for me.

It clearly made you a good competitor and television personality. When did it become something that you felt you needed to unpack?

As soon as I filed for divorce [from ex-husband and fellow Survivor alum John Fincher] and was in my own place. I had the custody split where my daughter [Ama] was with her dad some days, and I had empty space for the first time in basically my entire life where I got to sit with myself, and I was like, well, How did I get here? How did I get into a place where I was in a marriage that I didn’t wanna be in? I got off track at some point. So I started to dig in from that question. I started reflecting back on my childhood, which I had not thought of ever.

What did that look like for you?

I needed to stop, clear the decks, empty calendar days on my schedule, and just sit down and write to put these pieces together and thread these stories together. It brought me to write this book.

My whole foundational blueprint of life was formed in that commune, but as soon as we left, we didn’t really talk about it ever again. I never talked to my old friends from that place, and it was sort of a black box. I wish [my parents] had written their stories, or I wish we’d talked about it, because maybe I could have thought differently about my own life or made different choices — not that I have any regrets or resent [my parents] at all. They were heroic to get us out of an unhealthy situation, and I know I’m in a different place now. I’m not in survival mode.

How did becoming a mom lead you here?

Having my baby was like a death and rebirth for me, where I was like, I can’t keep doing life the way I have been doing it and take care of this kid and give her what she needs to be a well-adjusted person in the world. So I really had to stop and take a hard look at myself and feel the pain and trauma from my past so that I could heal it, resolve it and do things differently.

I created a business where I had enough money to really take some time to process the experiences I’ve been through and hire some healers and therapists to work with me so I could understand myself. I’ve worked with a lot of different people to get this book written, to just get myself to a place where I could think about my life differently and then offer my story as a gift to my daughter for whenever she’s ready to read it, if she wants to read it. If she doesn’t want to read it, that’s fine too. But at least it’s there for her if she wants it.

So, better understanding the way that you were raised and who you’ve become as a result is helping you to figure out how you want to — or don’t want to — raise your daughter. Is there any part of your upbringing that you’ve mirrored?

When I got divorced, I had to kill my dream of having a nuclear family. I realized I could make whatever family I wanted. And lucky me, I had this kind of foundational experience of living in a commune with people running around all over the place. So, I live my life like a commune now.

We have a huge chosen family. There are kids over here all the time, and I have people living in the back house all the time — it’s like an open-door policy. If anyone needs help or a place to stay, they will stay at my house. If I leave to go shoot a show, my parents are here and the extended family is here. Everyone’s pitching in.

My daughter is so deeply loved by so many people, and it takes so much pressure off of me to be the one role model. She has so many people who are very diverse, who are interesting, who have different perspectives and opinions about things in life, and who are pouring love into her.

I just feel super-blessed to have expanded my life from my divorce; so many possibilities have opened up of what a family can look like and feel like.

How do romantic relationships fit into that?

I would say this is still my biggest sort of growth edge. This is the first time I’m in a place where the other pieces of the puzzle of my life are pretty set. I feel great about my career, I’ve got the momming down, I can be flexible and negotiate with the co-parenting situation at the drop of a dime if I have to. I’ve got so much support built into my life for motherhood and for my work that the relationship piece, I can devote more time and emotional energy to. But it’s really hard.

I am a freedom-seeking person. I’ve realized that heterosexual monogamous marriage was too tight a container for me. I’ve now been in a queer relationship [with comedian Mae Martin] and that was so incredible and expansive and nourishing — it was like soul food for me. If there are other people who are willing to explore possibilities of different kinds of relationship structures, that’d be really cool for me. I’m digging into that these days.

I love that! Your involvement in reality competition shows doesn’t seem to be slowing down. What’s most changed about your relationship with being a public figure?

I know myself so much more now, so if people have opinions of me, good or bad, it doesn’t really have anything to do with me. Your opinion of me is none of my business — and that feels like a good place for me to be.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.