Shot in Fiji, Love Island USA is edited as events are unfolding, meaning Leah Kateb had no idea she was the No. 1 personality on summer’s No. 1 streaming show — ultimately landing her an honor in Us Weekly’s Reality Star of the Year issue.
“It’s so different from what I thought was going on on the outside,” Kateb, 25, tells Us of the fervent fan response. “Everyone got to speak with their family except for Miguel and I — and Miguel’s family didn’t know that he was on the show!” Kateb added that she asked producers, “‘Did I get disowned? Does my family hate me?’,” as a result of “the producers and some of the Islanders ..
. making me feel very bad about the way I reacted to some of the Rob stuff.” While Kateb assumed fellow Islander Rob Rausch would win support through the messy relationship unraveling, fans, in fact, related to Kateb’s attraction to the bad boy.
They admired her candor and praised her for taking accountability, like when she apologized wholeheartedly for admitting his “crying like a bitch” gave her “the ick.” “I’m really grateful everyone gave me a lot of grace,” she says. “It’s cool that it’s more acceptable to show all of those parts instead of, ‘Oh, my gosh, she said one horrible thing, so now she’s a villain.
’” Kateb gives a ton of credit to JaNa Craig and Serena Page for keeping her sane. “I was telling them, ‘I’m a piece of s—. I feel like s—.
I did [Rob] so wrong.’ But then they.
