“I sometimes question, have I made any progress?” Taylor Frankie Paul, who in just three short years leapt from being the leader of #MomTok on Hulu’s The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives to the single lead of ABC’s The Bachelorette, asks Vanity Fair. “We’re humans, we make mistakes; and I feel like I do [make] a lot of different mistakes. That’s what life’s about—it’s trial and error. I’m learning different lessons now in this phase of my life.”
Paul’s latest chapter plays out on season three of the wildly popular Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, which reveals that while promoting the show’s second season this spring, Paul privately suffered personal betrayal involving on-again, off-again ex-boyfriend Dakota Mortensen, father of her one-year-old son, Ever True, and a close family friend. When I reach Paul, she’s in the backseat of a moving vehicle, being whisked from one mystery location to another for her turn on The Bachelorette. Paul can’t technically disclose that she’s not near home, but the palm trees peeking through the car’s back windows confirm: we’re not in Utah anymore.
Since 2022, when Paul, now 31, revealed she was divorcing husband Tate (father of Paul’s daughter Indy and son Ocean, who do not appear on Mormon Wives), after she engaged in “soft swinging” (some heavy petting and emotional affairs, but no “full-on” sex) within their married friend group, she has been filming her life at a near-continuous pace.
Before sending shockwaves through Utah’s #MomTok community, Paul already shared near-daily snippets of her more buttoned-up Mormon life with what eventually grew to 1.8 million Instagram and 5.8 million TikTok followers. When the first season of Secret Lives of Mormon Wives premiered last September, it launched the eight MomTokers, led by the headline-making Paul, to something approaching Housewives-level fame.
“Sorry if I sound like I’m losing my voice, we’re getting over a little cold,” Paul rasps. The “we” another reminder that as the single mother of three who blew up her life, then made a reality show about it, is far from an obvious pick for ABC’s increasingly staid reality dating series—but more on that adventure later.
Taylor Frankie Paul (center) catches up with her fellow #MomTok members Miranda McWhorter, Mikayla Matthews, and Mayci Neeley during Secret Lives of Mormon Wives season three.Fred Hayes
