Leah Kateb still has no shortage of one-liners. It’s a freezing December afternoon in New York City, and Leah has been firing off quote-worthy sound bites since she arrived at StyleCaster’s cover shoot early in the morning. “We love her. She’s cunty,” she says to describe a latex dress with an inflatable breastplate. “Bent over. Period,” she proclaims when the photographer demonstrates a new pose. “Leah’s feet for free? What kind of shoot is this?” she asks when a crew member suggests she kick off her shoes for a few shots.
“When I had my first interview after the show, they were like, ‘Can we say your viral sound?’” Leah recalls on a Zoom a month later. “I said, ‘My viral sound? What are we talking about?’ They played it, and I was like, ‘When the hell did I say that?’”
Leah takes the call from the backyard of her parents’ house in Calabasas, Calif., where she recently moved after leaving her apartment in Los Angeles. Her boyfriend, Miguel Harichi, whom she met and came in second place with on Love Island USA Season 6, is off to the side getting things sorted after officially moving to Los Angeles in November. “She’s good with her words,” Miguel pops in, expanding on Leah’s quotability. “If there was a camera still on us right now, there’d be a lot more viral sounds.”
Leah and Miguel have been living their lives off camera since Love Island finished filming last July. Three weeks after the finale, Miguel visited Leah in Los Angeles for the first time, and the two have been by each other’s side ever since—aside from a short London trip Miguel made in November to say goodbye to his family and pack up his belongings for his official move to the United States.
While Leah and Miguel have been pretty much living together since they left Fiji, they haven’t technically moved in together yet. Miguel is currently staying in a rental as he and Leah look for land to build their dream house in Calabasas near her family. “It’s always been my dream to have a barn so I can take in foster animals,” she says. “Miguel gets to pick one animal. He wants a cow. I want fainting goats.”
A year ago, Leah’s life looked very different. She was single and in college when a casting director reached out to her on social media to ask her to join Love Island USA’s Season 6 cast. She had never seen an episode of Love Island and didn’t know anything about reality TV, but she wasn’t about to pass up a complimentary trip to Fiji. “I was like, ‘A vacation? Free? Men? Why not?’ Then I got there and it was the opposite of what I thought,” she says. “I went in pretty stupid and naive.”
I don’t enjoy drama. Drama enjoys me.
Very quickly, Leah became central to the drama on Love Island. And while she was by far the most popular contestant on Season 6—earning the nickname the “People’s Princess” and becoming the first islander to reach 1 million followers on Instagram—something didn’t sit right with Leah once the cameras went down and she returned home.
“I felt like any slight comment [after Love Island] was someone trying to prod the bear,” she says. “Even on the island, I didn’t want to fight. I don’t like arguing with people. I don’t enjoy drama. Drama enjoys me.”
It wasn’t until she settled back in the real world that she was able to fully process why she went so viral on Love Island. “You’re irritable because there are producers on the ground and they say and do things to make you irritable, so you can have the viral moments,” she says. “Now that I’ve come out, I realize a lot of those weird situations they put me through were because they got their best moments when I was irritated, upset, or agitated. I get it. No one wants to watch a TV show of happiness and peace. They want drama. But at the same time, I’m like, ‘Damn, how much do you want out of me?’”
After the Season 6 reunion, Leah went viral again for a TikTok comment seemingly announcing that she’d cut ties with the franchise. “I’m exhausted mentally physically and spiritually from this entire experience. I’m tired. I told them I am DONE after reunion,” she wrote at the time. Fast-forward half a year later, and Leah now clarifies that her comment was directed toward the producers she’d worked with, not the show as a whole.
And while Leah confirms that she would never appear on Love Island as a contestant again—even if she was single—enough time has passed that she would return to Fiji in a different capacity. “Previously, I was like, ‘I would not go back for anything,’” she says. “But then, when I’m thinking about it, I’m like, ‘Well, I’m not going to be the one in the fucking challenges.’ I just have someone in my ear telling me what the hell to say, which I would much prefer.”
What motivates her most to consider a return to TV? Her fans and supporters. “Every day I get messages where they’re like, ‘We need you back on our TV screens.’” she says. “You will not see Leah looking for love ever again on television. But rest assured, I will be back on TV one way or another.”
Could that return be her own reality show? “Honestly, the options are endless,” Leah teases. “I don’t have a clear-cut vision, but they’re there and we’re looking at them. We’re listening.”
There are two reality shows, however, that fans can count on Leah never doing. “I don’t think anyone wants to see me on Dancing with the Stars. I’m not a dancer,” she says. “People keep telling me to go on Traitors. I don’t know what that is. I’m a granny. I live under a rock. I see clips of it, and I still don’t understand it. It seems like a cesspool of negativity, at least from what I’ve seen. I don’t want to do that. I can’t imagine me sitting at that table with that many men going well.”
Acting is also something people have approached Leah about. “One of my biggest career goals is to be the final girl in a horror movie,” she says. “I’m obsessed with those old-school, iconic horror films—they’re so good. And I really feel I could totally channel that super intense, thrilling vibe and bring it to life for everyone to see.”
Back on the Zoom call, Leah and Miguel are debating the date of their anniversary. Currently, it’s Leah’s birthday—August 11—when Miguel asked her to be his girlfriend. “I surprised her on her birthday that I was back in the States,” Miguel recalls. “I was ignoring her calls, ignoring her texts. She was getting pissed off at me. She was texting Serena [Page], who I had in on it, like, ‘Yo. What’s going on? Miguel, he’s ignoring me. If he doesn’t want to be with me, just tell me.’ Serena’s messaging me like, ‘She’s getting pissed.’ I got Serena to bring her to this restaurant pretending they had a dinner planned, and I was there with a birthday card.”
[Love Island] was the opposite of what I thought.
Miguel turns to Leah, “I asked her to be my girlfriend on her birthday. When I asked you to be my girlfriend that day, I was like, ‘Damn, our anniversary is gonna be a bit funny.’” Leah responds, “We gotta change it.”
But what are the options? There’s the day they met when Miguel arrived in the villa. “We would have to ask someone what the day was because we didn’t know dates,” Leah says. “Or maybe it could be the day we had our first actual kiss.” Miguel interrupts her, “No because I kissed every girl in the villa,” to which Leah clarifies, “Bro! Our first actual kiss!”
While Leah and Miguel can’t come to a consensus on their anniversary (the day they read their vows in the Season 6 finale is another option), they agree on one thing: when they said “I love you” to each other for the first time. Though Miguel technically said “I love you” to Leah in her birthday card asking her to be his girlfriend (“I thought he just didn’t read it,” Leah offers), the real first time was when they were in the Hamptons after filming ended.
“We got back from this party. I was kissing her, and then I stopped,” Miguel recalls. “This thought that was in my head for a minute was now in the forefront of my mind, and I had to say it. I looked at her, and I was like, ‘You know what? It’s mad.’ She goes, ‘What?’ I go, ‘I think I love you. No, I’m in love with you.’ She was like, ‘Nah, stop. You’re chatting. You’re just drunk.’ I was like, ‘Nah, I’m being serious. You don’t have to say it back. I don’t expect you to. It is very early, but it’s how I feel. I love you.’”
Leah didn’t say it back that night. Fast-forward to three days later, and they’re in New York City when Leah pulls Miguel aside. “I had strep throat and he was taking such good care of me, so then I was like, ‘No, he was being serious. I think he does really love me,’” she says. “So I asked him, ‘Wait, did you mean that when you said it?’ He was like, ‘Of course. I still mean it. I’m in love with you.’ And I was like, ‘I love you.’” She cites her past relationships as the reason she didn’t say “I love you” back immediately. “I was reluctant to say it right away because of my luck and past with men, so I hold back rather than give it my all,” she says. “Because when I did give my all, it just ended up being thrown back into my face. So I was trying to protect myself.”
Rest assured, I will be back on TV one way or another.
In a couple days, Leah and Miguel are also set to celebrate their first Valentine’s Day. They have plans but aren’t sharing them just yet. In the lead-up to Valentine’s Day, Leah is also launching her first major campaign with PETA to promote animal adoption as a way to find your true love this V-Day. Leah, who has been a vegetarian since she was 10 years old, also shot the campaign with her dog, Blue (named after the velociraptor in Jurassic World), a husky-cattle-dog mix that she adopted after seeing a photo of her on a rescue’s Instagram. “My girl killed it. She was a fucking star. She ate me up,” Leah says. “But I’m so proud of her.” Miguel is also one of the few men Blue has approved of. “She’s really protective of me and normally hates men coming near me. But I think she knows that I’m good and safe,” she says.
Leah and Miguel realized at different moments on Love Island that their relationship was more than just a showmance. For Miguel, it was when he wrote his vows for her in the finale. “You get a whole day to sit there and write how you feel. Being able to process everything we’d gone through made me realize I actually really like this girl a lot,” he says. “It was really solidified when I was in London. I would only think about her. I would only want to talk to her. We would be on the phone for ages. I wouldn’t even want to leave my house.” He turns to her, “It was times away from you that made me realize how much I really liked you.”
For Leah, it was their final date, when Miguel calmed her down from falling apart in their first moment alone. “This is tea. The final date looked cute from the clips I see on TikTok, but there were hundreds of producers. It was the most non-intimate interaction we had on the entire show,” she says. “They put me in this miniskirt on an ATV. I was crying because of how many people saw my ass that day. Miguel was behind me the whole time holding my skirt down because it was so windy. I was freaking out because I was in a fucking G-string thong and there are all these men roaming around. Like I just gave these men the show of their life. They got the good thing for free. I was so sad, but literally the only good part was that was the one time Miguel and I were completely alone.”
While Leah hasn’t seen a single episode of her Love Island season (“I lived it. I’ve seen more than the show has.”), it’s moments like these that make her willing to recommend Love Island to someone else. “I would tell someone, ‘Why not?’” she says. “I ended up leaving with a boyfriend, which I thought I would never do. I’ve gained friends for life. What’s the worst that could happen? Just have fun and fuck around. It’s never that serious.”
Sitting in the backyard of her parents’ house six months after leaving Love Island, Leah finally feels readjusted to regular life. “It took me longer than I expected. I honestly didn’t think it was gonna take any time to adjust but I just felt not myself,” she says. Despite her conflicted feelings about her experience, Leah has no regrets. “I wouldn’t have traded it for anything,” she says—before looking off to the side where her boyfriend sits a few feet away. “I got the best person ever out of it, which is Miguel.”
CREDITS:
Photographer: OK McCausland
Art Director: Stephanie Cui
Stylist: Marc Eram with A-Frame Agency
Makeup: Nadia Tayeh with A-Frame Agency
Hair: Frankie Calire with Opus Beauty
Photography Assistants: Jackson Chihuly, Brandon Rivera
Styling Assistant: Anna Webber
MAKEUP:
Skin prep: U Beauty Super Hydrator (Amazon
, Nordstrom, Revolve, U Beauty)
Foundation: Makeup by Mario SurrealSkin Luminous Hydrating Foundation (Sephora)
Concealer: Hourglass Vanish Airbrush Concealer (Amazon
, Sephora, Ulta, Nordstrom)
Contour: Danessa Myricks Balm Contour (Sephora)
Blush: Huda Beauty Blush Filter Soft Glow Liquid Blush in Strawberry Cream (Sephora)
Highlighter: KJH Hyper Shine Lite Pigment in Lite Gold (KJH)
Eyeshadow: Morphe 18CT Matte Essentials Artistry Palette (Amazon
, Ulta)
Lashes: Rokael Beauty Eyelashes in Broken Stars (Rokael Beauty)
Eyeliner: Makeup by Mario Master Pigment Pro Eyeliner Pencil in Super Black (Sephora)
Brows: Anastasia Beverly Hills Brow Wiz (Amazon
, Sephora, Ulta)
Lip liner: Make Up For Ever Artist Color Pencil Longwear Lip Liner in Endless Cacao (Sephora)
Lipstick: MAC Cosmetics M·A·Cximal Sleek Satin Lipstick in “Myth” and “Gel” (Ulta, Nordstrom)
HAIR:
Oribe Dry Texturizing Spray (Amazon
, Sephora, Nordstrom, Walmart, Revolve)
Oribe Gold Lust Nourishing Hair Oil (Amazon
, Sephora, Nordstrom, Walmart, Revolve)
Oribe Superfine Hair Spray (Amazon
, Sephora, Nordstrom, Walmart)
