Katurah Topps says “Survivor 45” finale mistake 'still haunts me'

The fourth-place finisher explains why she changed her vote, and how she overcame her lowest point in the game.

Katurah Topps knew what had to be done. She needed to break up the showmance of Dee Valladares and Austin Li Coon on Survivor 45 or nobody else stood a chance. And she engineered the votes to make it happen. But when the time came for her to cast the deciding vote that would send Dee out of the game in fifth place, Katurah got cold feet and changed her vote to Julie Alley instead.

And then, just as Katurah predicted, Dee and Austin went all the way to end, with Dee ultimately winning the million dollars from the jury. Why did Katurah — who went down at the very next Tribal Council when she lost a fire-making challenge to Jake O’Kane — really change her vote at the last minute? We asked the fourth-place finisher all about it, as well as how she thinks she would have done had she made it to the final three, why she found herself at the bottom at the tribe swap, and… oh yeah, her true feelings about Uncle Bruce.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You were laser focused on getting Dee out of this game. You convinced Jake to go along with you, he swore on his Nana, and then you switched your vote to Julie at the last second. What led to that change?

KATURAH TOPPS: Oh my God, Dalton. It is the moment that still haunts me to date. It was so right there, and nobody beats me up about that more than me, so I totally get why everybody's like, “What is going on?” Honestly, it just came down to trust. I mean, they showed it a little bit in the episode that I really was working to convince Jake. He was laser focused on it had to be Julie, and I was like, “No, you don't get it.” And I literally laid out, “This will happen at five, this will happen at four, and every scenario that Dee is still in the game after five, we lose.” And I thought that maybe pulling him in on that would kind of get him on the same page with me.

It took hours though, all afternoon. I was drilling him and he finally did come around, to his credit. He was like, “I'm on board with the plan.” But I knew that Jake had a history of really wanting to make big moves so bad that I thought sometimes he overlooked the strategic part of what was happening. Me and Jake had worked so closely with the Kaleb thing at the merge split, and I remembered being like, “Why would he ever think as a Survivor player that going to rocks at final 12 makes sense?"

And then if you are going to try to convince somebody to do it, why would you think that telling them moments before? You're confirming all their suspicions that they were on the outs, that they have been excluded, and that you guys aren't going to add them or see them as a true alliance? Moments like that were in my head at that final five. We've been here with Jake before. We've had him pitch something crazy or want to do something so flashy that he forgets what's important. And my gut kept saying, "He's lying about something." Every alarm bell in my body [was going off].

I remember that feeling so strongly, and my life, my background, the way I've grown up, the things I've seen — you guys got a little bit of that in the show. I've seen some horrors. It has been hard. It's been rough, and I've learned that I need to listen to that. If my body is saying “Alert! Alert! Alert! This person is lying to me,” it literally has meant life or death. It literally could mean you may be homeless, something terrible may happen. And I just couldn't shake the feeling. And it was like you always listen to it and it's always right.

Honestly, I knew that Jake was hiding and lying about something. I thought it was that he would write my name down, and it turned out that the thing he was lying and hiding about was that he was going to play his idol for me, which is so crazy. Strategically, I didn't really vibe with what Jake was doing. I was like, “Why'd you tell Austin that you have an idol? Everybody knows you have this idol. You're saying you're going to play it for yourself, but I'm getting some energy from you that's saying, I got a special trick up my sleeve.” And what I've seen is Jake's tricks up his sleeve don't always benefit me and aren't always strategically where I think they should be.

Dee seemed worried about going against you in the final three. How do you think you would have done if you had gotten there?

If I got to the final three without Dee, I feel like I would've done it. My ideal final three at that point was Austin and Jake, and I felt very confident that I would be able to pull the votes from Jake. I didn't really view that he would get any votes, honestly, and I ended up being right about that. And I felt very strongly that of the Reba four Austin was kind of number four. The way I perceived the game, I thought Dee and Drew were the strategic brains, and Julie was the emotional, oh-we-love-her-so-much, and I didn't think Austin had that. I didn't get strategic insight from Austin.

I struggled so hard in that game, and for the first 12 days, every single person on my whole tribe turned against me repeatedly. And Austin never had that. He had this really comfortable alliance that saved him and protected him this whole way through. He had advantages and things that I didn't have.

I'm a pretty good talker. My persuasion skills are really good, and I felt comfortable that if I explained the game through my eyes and what I had done and how I stood up and said: You know what? I have to accept that Belo/new LuLu is never going to pretty much care about Katurah on a gameplay level. Let me flip it. Let me go to Reba. Let me pitch this to them, work with them until the end, and then while they start eating each other, I'll be there to be the one that helped them do that.

It happened exactly to the T the way I called it from day 12, and I just thought that I would be able to strongly push that out. Now, after seeing final Tribal Council, I remember I was like, “Oh, damn, Austin's coming a little harder than I thought,” so maybe I wouldn't have. And so in another world, maybe that's the universe saving me from being a zero-vote finalist at Tribal. But I was ready. I had the final Tribal speech. I had bullet by bullet ready to go.

Well, they didn't want any part of that. That's why they got rid of you. But you said something interesting I was going to ask you about. You talked about the first 12 days that everyone turned against you, and obviously we'll get into the Bruce of it all, but what's fascinating to me was that it seemed like you, Kellie, and Kendra were all tight, and then all of a sudden the tribe swap happens, and you're on the outs. As a viewer, I didn’t really understand why.

Yeah, honestly, it wasn't that it happened suddenly. It was happening all along. It was there the entire time. From my perception, I felt very excluded. And the problem is Belo never went to Tribal. New Lulu never went to Tribal. So you can give me words all day, but I'm from the Show Me state.

My body is my guide, my brain is my guide. If they are saying, “Alert! Something's off here, something's not working,” then I trust that. And nine times out of 10, I'm right. And I saw Kellie drop the girls and go with the boys. So I knew Kellie was working with Bruce and Jake and Brando, and so that put me and Kendra on the outs. And Kellie’s also close to Kendra, so where does Katurah go?

Even best-case scenario, if Kellie is with the girls, I'm still number three. I'm still at the bottom. I felt that, and I think the hints were there at Belo. And then by the time we got to New Lulu, I didn't even have Kendra. So everything ramped up. And I still maintain right now that my time at New Lulu was the worst time I've had in the game beyond the final five and watching Julie walk out.

Obviously, your frustration with Bruce was clear, and it was a big storyline throughout the season. What was it like watching that play back week after week after week?

Honestly, I didn't see the gravity of it. I didn't see the weight of how much I was talking about Bruce coming up. I was like, “Oh yeah, that'll probably be a thing.” You can see it, but I didn't expect it would be so much. And so I would watch, and it'd be week two and I'd be complaining about Bruce. I'm like, “Oh, okay.” Week three, and I'm like, “Oh.” And every week that it happened, I was a little bit…. But everything I was saying, I'd be like, “I agree with that girl!” I didn't say anything that I disagree with. I didn't say anything that at the moment I didn't feel.

And having felt so excluded from my tribe for 12 days, and having this person whose personality and communication style was just really abrasive to me…. Bruce's communication style really took me back to a low period in life. It took me back to being in an environment where blind obedience is required. Only you need to say “yes,” and you don't need to say “how, why, or could we, or maybe?” And it very much had that energy for both game things and non-game things. And so I remember feeling: Why am I being boxed in? Why am I not allowed to speak? Why am I not allowed to express myself? Why can't I say, “Let's discuss this vote together, let's think it through.” Why am I not allowed to add an extra scoop of salt water to the crab boil if I want to?

Things like that where it just really was very emotionally triggering. And I think because I didn't have anybody where I felt that I could say, “Are you also seeing this? Isn't this also kind of not okay? Do we agree that adults should not be talking like this?” — it made my confessionals my safe space. And so my confessionals got a little spicy.

How was your albeit brief time with Bruce at Ponderosa?

I got out so late that when I left the game that night, the very next day was final Tribal. So we pretty much had no time. I got in, had my Pondy meal, sobbed and went to bed. And then woke up the next day and it was like, we got to get ready for final Tribal. So we really didn't have much interaction at all.

So one of the big things I was wondering watching the finale was, were you telling Julie and Jake that you were considering going to law school, or was that completely out of the blue that they both were you telling you to become a lawyer?

Oh my God, watching that last night just broke my heart and reminded me why I love both of them so much. No, I was not telling them that, but I was so afraid that I was lying about big things — my profession, my age — that I would subconsciously maybe create a wedge between myself and other cast members. So I was really adamant that I wanted to still talk about my work that I'm passionate about, just without the legal aspect of it.

So they heard me talk about the work that I am doing, and that work is really adjacent to legal work. And so they were like, “You should just take the next step and be a lawyer.” And they came up with it on their own. And the fact that they were saying that, I was like, “Guys, thank you!” But there was a part of me as a first-generation law student and first-generation college student who was like, “Whoa, it is cool that these strangers who don't know me, and one is a lawyer, are saying to me, ‘You should go to law school.’” It was very emotional and loving.

How important was it to you to have your life story told — a story with some pretty shocking and harrowing details — and have it be told not as a tragic story but as an inspiring and hopeful one?

It was the most critical thing, Dalton. I think they showed a moment in the show where I said, “Hey, if I'm being honest, all my past is dark.” It's scary. I've got stories for years that I could tell you that could haunt a person. And so I knew you can't slip into that darkness. I've learned that you don't slip into it because it's deep and it's heavy. And so it was critical for me to say: I'm not trying to bring people down. I'm not trying to say woe is me. I'm just trying to show the truth, which is I've been through some s---. But look, I'm still here! I'm still standing, I'm still pushing. And that's what led me to Survivor — me thinking, you can go through some rough stuff and come out on top. Maybe you'll come out a millionaire.

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

Related content:

• Dee Valladares reveals unaired Survivor 45 Tribal Council breakdown

• Jeff Probst calls Survivor 45 finale mishap 'the biggest unforced error of the game'

• Julie is absolutely terrified in Survivor 45 exclusive deleted scene

• Survivor 46 host Jeff Probst shares intel on next season of the show

• Survivor 45 recap: Fascinating finale caps a solid season

• And the Survivor 45 winner is…

• The Survivor 45 final five speak!

• The Survivor 45 jury speaks!

• Jeff Probst says Survivor 45 final Tribal Council is 'a war'

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.