Photo courtesy of Picryl.
Season 22 Bachelorette, TikTok Influencer, and Reality TV personality gets caught up in negative headlines days before The Bachelorette’s release date.
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By Wandalie Marie Taveras
TAMPA, Fla. – Taylor Frankie Paul is one of the stars of the hit reality TV show The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and season 22 of The Bachelorette, which was set to premiere on Sunday, March 22. Due to Paul facing recent legal issues and an old video that has recently been published of the assault of Dakota Mortensen, ABC decided to cancel the premiere of The Bachelorette.
“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,” a Disney Entertainment Television spokesperson shared this statement with ABC News on Thursday. “Our focus is on supporting the family.”
TMZ released a video on Thursday, just three days before the premiere of The Bachelorette, from 2023 of Paul assaulting Dakota Mortensen, her boyfriend at the time and now the father of her youngest child. Similar to the beginning of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, Paul was seen assaulting Mortensen in the presence of her oldest child, this time from the video perspective of Mortensen.
Paul was then arrested that night for misdemeanor charges of assault, criminal mischief, and commission of domestic violence in the presence of a child according to a statement from the Herriman Police Department.
According to Paul in an interview on Call Her Daddy, where she was announced as the bachelorette, she spoke on this situation and stated that “the charges we all dropped.”
Due to recent domestic assault allegations, the past has made itself present, causing another controversy for Paul.
“Contact was made with involved parties on [Feb] 24th and 25th,” a source from the Draper City Police Department said to People, referencing Paul and Mortensen. They confirmed that there is an open “domestic assault investigation” and details are currently confidential.
“It’s been a heavy time to see the headlines,” Paul said in response to the alleged domestic violence investigation on Good Morning America. “Especially during this time of the Bachelorette being released and it’s supposed to be a really exciting time.”
ABC was not the only ones who took action since the allegations had been made public. It has been confirmed by Paul during her interview with Good Morning America that season 5 of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives has halted production.
“It was a decision that all us girls came up with and agreed on,” Mikayla Matthews, one of the stars of the show, responded to a question about production being paused during an Instagram Q&A on Thursday, according to E! News. “We didn’t feel comfortable filming with everything that was happening.”
Matthews is one of the members of the TikTok influencer group, MomTok, that stars in The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. The show centered around this group of women as they navigate friendship, family, and fame while also trying to change their religion’s cultural expectations of women. Paul was considered the leader of this group and has been known for her blunt personality and public way of handling confrontation, which has led to problems in her relationships with the other members.
On March 13, the latest season of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives premiered and gave insight into Paul’s preparation for The Bachelorette. The show featured Paul’s struggles with her past and ex-boyfriend Mortensen. Throughout the show, Mortensen consistently attempted to continue a relationship with Paul while he also pursued relationships with other women.
In the season finale, Paul ended up sleeping with Mortenson the night before she was set to leave and film The Bachelorette, and she ended up missing her flight to Los Angeles.
“This is not only like an opportunity, I think, for just finding someone,” Paul said in the season finale’s confessional while she was packing to leave for The Bachelorette on a later flight. “This is an opportunity to get away from the toxicity I’m in here, and I want out of it.”
Paul has now gone through the process of The Bachelorette where she dated 30 men and narrowed them down to one man who would possibly become her fiancé. At the end of session 21, Jen Tran chose herself instead of one of the men, so it cannot be assumed that Paul did not do the same. Paul’s season was expected to be particularly special because she was not familiar with the show and its process, while most bachelorettes were selected from the women who were featured in The Bachelor.
“Part of the greatness of having Taylor as our bachelorette was that she’s not from our world,” Jesse Palmer, host of The Bachelorette, said in an interview on YouTube with Extra. “Taylor is someone we know is going to say what’s on her mind and she’s going to do whatever she wants to do at any given moment.”
It was also confirmed by People that one of the sponsors of both The Bachelorette and The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives has decided to no longer support the shows or Paul. On top of this loss, The Hollywood Reporter speculated the amount of money ABC might be losing with the show’s cancellation and are even more intrigued about what has happened behind the scenes.
Both shows being affected by the domestic abuse allegations leads to uncertainty about the future of The Bachelorette and The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. As the situation continues to develop, more information will come out and determine the future of these shows and Paul’s career.