“What were you thinking?”
This is the question on everyone's mind between “The Bachelorette” producers, ABC, Hulu and Disney's legal team.
On Thursday, ABC announced that the much-hyped new season of “The Bachelorette,” scheduled to premiere Sunday, would not move forward “at this time.” Why not? Well, the bachelorette in question, “The Secret Life of Mormon Wives” star Taylor Frankie Paul, was the subject of a second domestic assault investigation when a damning video of the first, in which she pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, circulated courtesy of TMZ. Filming on the fifth season of “Mormon Wives,” which Paul is an executive producer, also came to an abrupt halt.
The disturbing video is difficult to watch. Not so much because Paul puts his on-again, off-again partner Dakota Mortensen in a headlock and then pelts her with metal stools (sadly, this is a scene that wouldn't be out of place on many reality shows), but because there's a little boy in the room. After one of the stools bounces toward the camera, Paul's then-5-year-old daughter Indy begins to cry and Mortensen then says “help your son.” Even when the girl screams “mom,” Paul continues his rampage. When Mortensen belatedly tries to help Indy, Paul yells at him to “stay away from my son.”
And while “Bachelorette” producers and Disney lawyers may not have seen the video, which was presented in the 2023 court case, the police report makes clear that Indy was injured during the incident and noticed a “chicken egg” on the boy's head. Paul was charged with aggravated assault, child abuse and domestic violence in the presence of a child. Paul, who said he had been drinking before the incident, pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated assault, a third-degree felony. The remaining charges were dismissed and Paul, who was placed on probation, entered a plea of suspension. In August 2026, a court will review the assault charge and, if Paul complies with the terms of his probation, could reduce it to a misdemeanor.
Should a new criminal charge be filed after the current investigation, all bets are off.
So was it the emergence of the video or the possibility of a felony conviction that caused ABC to freeze this season of “The Bachelorette”? Does the reason matter?
ABC knew that Paul had been accused of a domestic violence incident that resulted in injuries to his son and somehow thought it would make a great bachelorette party anyway.
What were they thinking?
The lineup for season 22 of “The Bachelorette” starring Taylor Frankie Paul is seen Thursday, the day her season was canceled.
(HIGHFIVE/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images via Getty Images)
They were thinking that audiences like messy “authenticity,” and there's nothing more authentically messy than Paul, 31, who rose to social media fame by founding MomTok, a TikTok community of married Mormon women who dance, joke, and fight against the traditions and restrictions of their faith. Pretty and profane, funny and frank, Paul amassed a large following. After Paul talked about the “gentle rocking” she and her husband practiced with other Mormon couples, the group went viral and led to the creation of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” the first episode of which was titled “Taylor's First Book.”
The first season, which chronicled the fallout of the “soft swinging” scandal, was based on Paul's frank discussions about his chaotic life; was Hulu's most-watched unscripted season premiere of 2024. The subsequent three seasons, in which the MomTokers deal with the pressures of fame, their romantic relationships and all kinds of internal “Mean Girls” drama, have continued to grow the show's viewership even as ratings for “The Bachelor” franchise declined.
To the algorithm, or to a number cruncher, hopes that Paul could bring some of the “Mormon wives” magic to “The Bachelorette” might make sense.
Except Paul isn't magical; she waves her red flags high and proud, and the good people at ABC, Hulu, and Disney charged at them with the unconscious desperation of so many trapped and maddened bulls. (It usually doesn't end well for the bulls either.)
The “soft change” led her to divorce her first husband, Tate Paul, with whom she has two children, including Indy. As recounted in “Mormon Wives,” she began her turbulent relationship with Mortensen, with whom she shares a young son, Ever. Her arrest in 2023 was a story: She called it one of the lowest points of her life, although in a recently resurfaced TikTok video, she brags about throwing things and getting arrested, and in Season 4 she was found in bed with Mortensen, who she had supposedly broken up with, on the morning she was supposed to fly to Los Angeles to film “The Bachelorette.” (Took a later flight). The season finale ended with the possibility that Paul could be pregnant.
The cross-pollination of reality shows has become so increasingly popular – ABC's “Dancing With the Stars” couldn't live without it, and Peacock's hit show “The Traitors” is based on it – that there seems to be little attention paid to the fact that not all reality shows are created equal. The “Bachelorette” producers not only ignored doubts expressed by her own fans, many of whom did not think Paul would approach the show as a truly single woman looking for love, but they reportedly extended many freedoms to her that they denied to other contestants, including unsupervised use of her phone during filming.
They clearly wanted the ratings miracle that Paul's unadorned debauchery had bestowed on “Mormon Wives.”
Casting for maximum drama is a driving force in many reality shows. Even if one accepts that perfectly reasonable people are happy to live in a bubble with strangers for months on end in the hope of achieving love, fame or a cash prize, inevitably someone is chosen to bring the crazy, shall we say, conversation-starting personality. And like all television, reality faces divided and shrinking audiences, so the decibel level of that conversation is often very high.
Hence the rise of Taylor Frankie Paul, queen of MomTok and the “Mormon wives,” a woman known for her lack of filter and her habit of exposing everything. For our entertainment purposes.
Of course, there's no point in mentioning the genre's many past, and often derailing, scandals: the suicides, the racism, the sexual assaults, the homophobia, the bullying, the pedophilia, the infidelity, and just the general horror that has arisen from the popularity of people sharing their “real” lives. Audiences connect with these shows, the messier the better.
But it turns out that some messes are too big to capitalize on even for the indulgent eyes of reality fans.
“The Bachelor” franchise should have known better. It has been around for almost a quarter of a century and has suffered its fair share of scandals over those years. But by recruiting a woman who was convicted of assault in an incident that harmed her own son, “The Bachelorette” knew it was playing with fire.
They were clearly hoping she would rekindle the show's dying embers.
Instead, he burned it.
