Parvati Shallow’s ‘Heart Dropped’ When She Saw Fellow ‘Survivor’ Star Sandra Diaz-Twine on ‘The Traitors’ (Exclusive)

The Traitors mansion isn't big enough for two Survivor legends. Season 2 of the Peacock series debuted Friday night, pitting two winners of the long-running CBS show — Sandra Diaz-Twine and Parvati Shallow — against one another in an entirely new kind of competition (one that's far, far away from the picturesque islands of Fiji). But when the two got out of their cars to survey their fellow cast members, it wasn't exactly a happy reunion.

As fans will remember, Diaz-Twine and Shallow came into The Traitors with a little bit of history — two seasons of it, in fact. Both women starred on Season 20 of the CBS competition series, Heroes vs. Villains, as well as Season 40, Winners at War. As Shallow says in the premiere, the two have a bit of a "contention" over who's the real queen of Survivor, which didn't exactly make Diaz-Twine a welcome sight.

"My heart dropped," Shallow exclusively told The Messenger. "I think that was the intention from the casting producers by putting us together. They wanted drama immediately, and I didn't know what it was going to be like with Sandra. We'd had that little feud previously, that last year. We'd texted a little bit back and forth, but we'd never fully, really connected in a way that felt safe and friendly."

"Or real," Diaz-Twine interjected.

Diaz-Twine — who became the first two-time winner of Survivor when she nabbed the Heroes vs. Villains prize — attested that she, too, was "1,000 percent caught off-guard" seeing her Survivor rival in the flesh once again. "Not only now do I have to play the game," she added, "Now I have to sort out my issues with Parvati as well."

However, with the help of costar Peppermint (who previously came in second place on RuPaul's Drag Race), the two sorted out their issues immediately, agreeing to work together.

Since then, Diaz-Twine said, the rivalry has been "water under the bridge," adding that she "never looked back."

"It's weird that The Traitors could be a healing experience, but I think that is what happened for me and Sandra," Shallow said. "I think we're good." 

However, that didn't mean that Shallow and Diaz-Twine were on the same team. In fact at the end of the premiere episode, Shallow was selected to be the third Traitor by Dan Gheesling and Phaedra Parks, meaning she immediately had to begin lying to her fellow costars.

Meanwhile, anyone who's watched Survivor knows that Diaz-Twine would have been ready to embrace a villainous role.

"I wanted to be a Traitor!" she said. "Then, when I wasn't picked, I just kept saying, 'Oh, I would love to be a Traitor,' just in case I got picked by a Traitor to be a Traitor later on."

You can watch Diaz-Twine and Shallow on the first three episodes of The Traitors Season 2, which are now available to stream on Peacock. New episodes premiere Thursdays at 9/8c.