“I’ll be tuning in for the first time since middle school,” a friend texted shortly after news broke Wednesday that The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star Taylor Frankie Paul has been tapped as the next lead of ABC’s The Bachelorette. The shocking casting move was announced on Call Her Daddy, where Paul was interviewed by host Alex Cooper, prompting another friend to share her misgivings about the choice. But she’ll be tuning in anyway: “I need something because Paradise disappointed me.”
Those disparate reactions are the exact reason why Taylor, a Mormon whose “soft swinging” scandal went viral on TikTok in 2022 and catapulted The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives to Hulu’s most watched unscripted premiere of 2024, is the perfect choice for a franchise that’s been sharply fading from the zeitgeist in recent years. Whether excited for a fresh infusion of Paul’s unfiltered soundbites and messy romantic past or skeptical that her vibe will translate to the more traditional dating format—buzz of any kind is exactly what the Bachelor has been craving.
As lead of the forthcoming 22nd season, Paul brings with her some unchartered baggage for the typically staid series, which first premiered back in 2002. “I don’t know if you know my backstory, but I’ve been through really bad things in the public eye,” Paul told Vanity Fair earlier this year ahead of her own show’s second season. “Most people would never show their face again.” She’s referring to the swinging with other members of her tight-knit Salt Lake City friend group, but also her tumultuous on-again-off-again romance with ex-boyfriend Dakota Mortensen, father of her one-year-old son, Ever True. She also shares two children—daughter Indy and son Ocean, who do not appear on Mormon Wives—with her ex-husband, Tate Paul.
“How do I make this work? I’m a co-parent, I have two baby daddies not one,” a curled-up Paul told Cooper on Call Her Daddy, “so I’m dealing with two different people, my children, my home base is here. Can I travel that long? Can I be gone that long?” she said of her own reservations. But Paul was inspired by fellow castmates Whitney Leavitt and Jen Affleck’s migration to Dancing With the Stars, which premieres on ABC next week. “They have their husbands [to help raise the kids], so for me I’m like, is this possible for me to do as a single mom?” Paul continued. “Can I make it work realistically no matter how much I want this? And I was like, I can, if you want to you can and it comes down to that so I was just like, I will make it work.”
That leads us to the shrewd bit of cross-pollination happening for ABC and Hulu, owned by the same parent company in Disney. After testing the waters with a Mormon Wives crossover on Hulu’s Vanderpump Villa earlier this year, then casting not one, but two cast members for DWTS, the burgeoning reality television universe will triple dip by casting Paul as Bachelorette. The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives season three returns on November 13 and Bachelorette is slated for a 2026 debut. This shores up the streaming-first Mormon Wives audience, helping to lure key viewership demographics back to the brand’s broadcast offerings. And that transfer can’t come soon enough: the premiere episode of Bachelor in Paradise season 10 earned roughly 4 million fewer viewers than season two of Mormon Wives, both of which aired this year.
Those in the know have been calling for outsourcing of leads for some time now. “They should take any single guy from Love Island season seven—he’s the next Bachelor,” Chad Kultgen, co-host of popular Bachelor podcast Game of Roses and co-author of How to Win the Bachelor, told Vanity Fair earlier this year. “They have done the work for you, made these people superstars in the reality dating TV format. That’s how they should be thinking.”
The powers that be, including newly instated showrunner Scott Teti of Bravo’s Summer House, appear to have been listening. Taylor’s announcement as Bachelorette was originally believed to be for the lead of The Bachelor’s landmark 30th season due to scheduling. Previously, The Bachelorette aired in the spring or summer, followed by Paradise, then The Bachelor in January. The franchise last cast a lead from outside of its pool of Instagrammable suitors for season 25 in Matt James, who became the first-ever Black lead. Although, he was best known on social media as best friend to The Bachelorette runner-up Tyler Cameron.
Even the manner in which Taylor was announced feels fresh. This is the first time a lead hasn’t been announced on an ABC-affiliated platform like Good Morning America or an After the Final Rose special. Cooper as conduit for such news feels like acknowledgment that a young female audience tunes into her podcast—and that the podcasting realm itself is key to sustaining The Bachelor’s relevance. Further proof: former Bachelor Nick Viall, host of the popular Viall Files podcast, hosted the season two Mormon Wives reunion. And the last Paradise reunion was not filmed on an ABC soundstage, but recorded for the official Bachelor Happy Hour podcast.
There will be inevitable growing pains with such a shakeup—the ABC audience is typically less forgiving of unapologetic women—and Paul has already said that she’ll require any husband of hers to relocate to Utah. (Hope he has his Swig order down!) But this only further stokes the intrigue that comes with casting Paul—who is well-versed in making must-see TV. “The more open you are, the more backlash you can get,” she told VF in May, “but also the more relatable you are.”
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