Taylor Frankie Paul’s dirty laundry is our reality check

Devoted viewers of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” have seen the 2023 video that ended Taylor Frankie Paul’s journey on “The Bachelorette” before it began – part of it, anyway. The police body cam footage of her arrest serves as the “Mormon Wives” premiere’s cliffhanger.

Until Thursday, that is the extent of what most “Mormon Wives” viewers know about what Paul calls “the worst night of my life” without saying why. The second episode picks up one year later, showing Paul pregnant with the child of Dakota Mortensen, her boyfriend at the time and the other adult involved in the incident that got her arrested.

“It has been a challenge going from the scandal to relationship to miscarriage to arrest to being pregnant again,” she says as a sentimental melody lilts in the background. From there, any open questions about that night were quickly set aside to focus on the baby drama. Yes, she was charged with aggravated assault and sentenced to 36 months’ probation, she explains, but the revelation that she and Mortensen never broke up? So much juicier.

As fresh domestic abuse allegations have come to light, along with a video showing what occurred before the cops came to Paul’s door in 2023, we’re reminded that some things can’t be buried under four seasons of manufactured drama, regardless of what a major media corporation might have hoped.

Paul would have been the first “Bachelorette” lead who hadn’t appeared on a previous season of “The Bachelor,” had ABC not decided to pull the new season from its prime-time lineup before its Sunday premiere. But that video, obtained by TMZ, shows why she was never a suitable choice to lead this Disneyfied romance fantasy.

In it, Paul violently throws barstools at Mortensen as her young child sits on a couch in the same room. Mortensen appears to deflect one that flies in the direction of where the child is sitting. The scene is dimly lit, making it hard to see where the stool landed. But shortly after it arcs into the darkness, the child can be heard bawling as Mortensen protests that the chair struck her.

That “Mormon Wives” went forward anyway demonstrates the nonchalance of a media corporation more concerned with its bottom line than its scruples.

That the show became Hulu’s most-watched unscripted premiere in 2024 also says a great deal about us, the audience. Remember, plenty of viewers saw that arrest; as for how many wondered what led to it, who knows? To many, the sight of Paul being clapped into cuffs may have even burnished her renegade image. As another celebrity once confidently pointed out, when you’re a star, you can do anything. Criminal behavior, alleged or admitted, becomes a virtue when it’s packaged as “mess.”

Indeed, the “mess” is the sales pitch.

“The Bachelor” franchise has fielded its share of scandals resulting from insufficient participant vetting, yielding seasons where viewers have watched its lovelorn leads being courted by men and women outed in real time as cheaters, bigots, and, in some cases, men with criminal records or restraining orders against them.

This lapse is different. In some ways, it’s worse. Too many of us witnessed the part of that turbulent episode that “Mormon Wives” saw fit to show us and wrote it off as good, messy TV. But the details of what came before are readily available. The Salt Lake Tribune’s coverage of the 2023 incident lists all the charges Paul initially faced, including two felony counts of domestic violence in the presence of a child, and one misdemeanor count each of child abuse and criminal mischief.

Aggravated assault is a serious charge in itself, but any implications of child endangerment, even if they were dismissed, should have altered our perception of the situation and, possibly, Paul, much sooner than now.

(Disney/Fred Hayes) Dakota Mortenson and Taylor Frankie Paul on “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Reunion Special”

But the most pertinent information in the story establishes that there was video evidence supporting those charges. That means Disney and ABC either chose to disregard its existence, or gambled – correctly, it turns out – that the public wouldn’t bother to look too deeply into what happened.

ABC and “Bachelorette” producers sure seemed to be counting on that. On the heels of ABC recruiting two other Mormon Wives, Jen Affleck and Whitney Leavitt, to compete on “Dancing with the Stars,” sending one to goose “The Bachelorette”’s declining ratings made synergistic sense. Paul’s selection yielded a brand deal with Cinnabon, eager to further mainstream the “dirty soda” trend popularized by “Mormon Wives” and cater to the Bachelor Nation with themed packaging.

But even the revelation that Paul and Mortensen are under investigation for domestic violence allegations yet again wasn’t enough reason for ABC to break up with its prize Mormon Wife until Thursday’s visual shocker. (It’s also worth noting that Cinnabon recognized there was no salvaging this bake before ABC did, canceling its “Mormon Wives” and “Bachelorette” partnerships shortly after the news broke.)

“In light of the newly released video just surfaced today, we have made the decision to not move forward with the new season of ‘The Bachelorette’ at this time,” said a Disney Entertainment Television spokesperson via a press statement released Thursday, adding, “our focus is on supporting the family.”

As of this story’s publication, no charges have been filed against either Paul or Mortensen. On Thursday, TMZ reported that Mortensen has filed in Utah for a restraining order against Paul.

(Disney/Fred Hayes) Mayci Neeley and Taylor Frankie Paul in “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives”

Domestic abuse is never a simple matter. Neither is it ethically appropriate for a media company to pretend it doesn’t exist, or to recast it as a launch for a reality show storyline. But in 2026, everything can be dramatized until we’re numb to the truth of what we’re seeing. Battlefield footage from a disastrous war can be cut into shareable social media bites resembling a gamer’s “Call of Duty” memes. A made-for-TV cabinet can say and do the ridiculous and we simply shake our heads.

Next to all that, a rocky relationship styled into an on-and-off situationship for a reality TV subplot is the proverbial hill of beans Rick Blaine mentioned in “Casablanca.” Of course, ABC would make one of its core players the gauzy focus of a post-Oscars special, doted on by many of the 22 women who came before Paul. Those former Bachelorettes tried to win a leading man’s heart on “The Bachelor,” and were sent home as America looked on. As for Paul, four seasons of negotiating an affair defined by bickering and cheating proved she was ready for “real” romance.

Except for this lead-in: the Draper City, Utah, police department, which is conducting the latest investigation, indicated that the most recent conflict occurred after Paul had wrapped production on “The Bachelorette,” but while production on the fifth season of “Mormon Wives” was underway. Filming was paused on Monday, Mar. 16.

An all-too-common reaction that I’ve seen on Reddit and elsewhere is that this revelation confirms Paul was . . . sigh . . . never in it for the right reasons, which is unfair to the men who genuinely went to “The Bachelorette” to find love. That is quite the takeaway, not to mention depressingly way off base from the point.

But it also explains how “Mormon Wives” became Hulu’s most popular reality TV series, possibly even bigger than “The Kardashians.”

Reality TV loves to generate iconoclastic figures like Paul, turning real people and their issues into characters and storylines. Kim, Khloé, Kourtney and the rest never had the “Mormon Wives”’ tradwife-adjacent allure, nor their stars’ devotion to fourth wall-breaking. The “Mormon Wives” brand is steeped in the kind of stylized transparency inherent to social media, where Paul rose to prominence as a MomTok influencer. On TikTok, she and other Utah MomTok pals shared footage of family togetherness, girls’ nights, makeup tutorials and choreographed dances.

(Disney/Fred Hayes) Layla Taylor, Taylor Frankie Paul and Miranda McWhorter in “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives”

She also announced that she and others engaged in what she called “soft swinging,” consensual intimacy with other people that stops short of “going all the way.” Enter the TV producers.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as you can imagine, doesn’t endorse “Mormon Wives” for many reasons. One is that its stars are their family’s breadwinners. So are tradwives, but the women of MomTok are upfront about it.

LDS leadership decrees state, for example, “Women are to take care of the family — the Lord has so stated — to be an assistant to the husband, to work with him, but not to earn the living, except in unusual circumstances.” The Wives’ appeal is in the way they challenge such calcified definitions of “traditional” gender roles.

But then, the “Mormon Wives” never stray too far from hearth and home, either. That means their adventures handily dovetail with right-wing presumptions about womanhood and wifely obligation. Its stars embody the right’s fantastical vision of feminine perfection: Each has some version of a blowout and a tight physique not entirely God-given. Each has done their motherly duty and views home and family as the center of their world.

But as flashes of online search terms like “soaking” and “soft swinging” tease in the series’ deliberately porny opening credits sequence, these wives aren’t afraid to get a little naughty, boom-chicka-pow-pow! The accompanying imagery of damsels in floor-length gowns with sinfully plunging necklines nods at a libertine underbelly that outsiders assume exists in any repressive religious community.

The action that follows demonstrates its cast’s sterling conservative values, including Paul’s decision to move on from that cyclonic altercation with Mortensen, have his son, named Ever, and keep making TikToks together. However, in the much-discussed third season reunion, and many of the episodes leading up to it, it became clear that their relationship, whatever its status, is troubled, to put it mildly.

Want more from culture than just the latest trend? The Swell highlights art made to last.Sign up here

“Out with the old mess, in with the new” is the reality genre’s unspoken motto, but let’s think about what that means here. Mortensen’s latest allegations include a claim that Paul physically attacked him in front of their son.

A spokesperson for Paul told People magazine, “After years of silently suffering extensive mental and physical abuse as well as threats of retaliation, Taylor is finally gaining the strength to face her accuser and taking steps to ensure that she and her children are protected from any further harm.” The statement goes on to say that Paul is “preparing to own and share her story.”

But this reads like a crisis PR professional’s perfume sprayed on a garbage fire, especially in light of Paul’s Tuesday statement to People, where she said, “Just the timing is hard, and it’s a big deal. I feel like every premiere that I’ve experienced, I’ve never enjoyed fully, so this is another one.”

(Disney/John Fleenor) Taylor Frankie Paul

“I’m struggling for sure,” she went on to add, “but also at the same time I feel like if I don’t show up, then I’m just giving these opportunities away and not enjoying what we’ve worked on and something super exciting that’s coming.”

“Mormon Wives” viewers made Taylor Frankie Paul famous for a reason, as she reminded its viewers during her obligatory promotional visit to “Good Morning America.” “I’m a person that will always speak my truth,” she said. “That’s what I’m known for.” Yes. And the subsequent wreckage.

“The Bachelorette” acknowledged this in its way with this season’s tagline: “If you don’t fit the mold, break it.” But some limits, especially of what’s acceptable, exist for good, sober reasons. We would do well to take that to heart.

“The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” and past seasons of “The Bachelorette” are streaming on Hulu.