Taylor Frankie Paul: How Disney Signed Off on a Disaster — and The Fallout Begins
I’ve got the details and dollars on ‘The Bachelorette,’ ‘Mormon Wives’ and Disney’s one-woman wrecking ball
I host the Ankler Agenda podcast, and my Disappearing Ladder series covers Hollywood career challenges, starting with Gen Z. I spoke to Heated Rivalry’s casting directors and wrote about the America’s Next Top Model reckoning. I’m elaine@theankler.com
Two hit shows upended in less than a week.
Disney’s got a mess on its hands amid domestic violence allegations between one of its biggest reality stars, #MomTok creator Taylor Frankie Paul, and her ex Dakota Mortensen — halting production on Hulu’s The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ fifth season and prompting ABC on Thursday to yank Paul’s season of The Bachelorette off the air just three days before its premiere. (Instead of The Bachelorette, ABC aired a rerun of American Idol in the 9 p.m. slot last night.)
For anyone not keeping up, here’s the chain of events and why it matters to the TV business:
A domestic violence incident in late February involving Paul and Mortensen triggered a domestic assault investigation by the Draper City Police Department in Utah. (The incident happened after The Bachelorette filming had wrapped, police told the New York Times.) The investigation prompted Mormon Wives to pause filming on its current season and led to a separate internal investigation by Jeff Jenkins Productions, the company that produces Mormon Wives. A source familiar with the situation tells me Jenkins Productions’ internal probe, which is being conducted by a third-party law firm, should conclude this week. Jenkins reps declined to comment.
On Thursday, TMZ released a video from 2023 that shows Paul throwing metal barstools at Mortensen — Mortensen yells, “Your daughter is sitting right there!” and a child can be heard crying. The police report notes that a 5-year-old child was hit and had a “goose egg” bump on her head, per reports. Paul was charged with felony counts of domestic violence and aggravated assault in early 2023, per the Salt Lake Tribune, reaching a plea deal in August of that year.
Despite earlier reports that The Bachelorette would continue to premiere on Sunday as scheduled amid the investigation, ABC reversed course after executives saw the video (which they had not previously seen, my colleague Lesley Goldberg reported) and pulled the entire season, marking a highly unusual — if not completely unprecedented — move.
As for why it matters:
The fate of two of Disney’s biggest reality shows is now up in the air. Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and its soft-swinging, dirty soda-drinking MomTokers was an immediate hit for Hulu when it debuted in 2024 (with the premiere episode including body camera footage of Paul’s arrest after that 2023 altercation with Mortensen).
For the flagging Bachelorette, Paul’s casting was supposed to be a shot in the arm. Nielsen ratings for the show have plummeted over the past decade, from around 8.5 million viewers in the 2016 finale to around 3 million viewers of the most recent finale. The reality space is increasingly crowded by newer hits like Netflix’s Love Is Blind and NBCUniversal’s American edition of Love Island.
The double-headed controversy is unfurling amid a leadership shuffle at Disney. No doubt this is all a big headache that new Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro couldn’t have anticipated on his first day on the job — unless there’s Imagineers drama I’m not hearing about — nor could have Debra OConnell, the longtime Disney biz-side exec and ABC News overseer who last week was named chair of Disney Entertainment TV amid the Mouse House’s succession drama that resulted in previous chair Dana Walden being named chief creative officer.
Today I answer some of the urgent questions about this complicated and sad scenario:
Which exec pulled the plug on Bachelorette and who knew what, when
The real production budget (way higher than previously reported) — and if Disney or producer Warner Bros. eats the loss
Who could be held responsible for the mess and whether heads will roll
Whether Paul’s season of The Bachelorette could still air (and where)
When Mormon Wives production is expected to resume
What really happened in 2023 — and how it was handled internally
What one source says about the casting of Paul: “No one saying ‘no’ to a terrible idea”