The Bachelorette's messy break-up with Taylor Frankie Paul
interview on ABC's Good Morning America this week, caught between trying to promote her turn in the network's new series of The Bachelorette and addressing fresh domestic violence allegations lodged against her by her ex-boyfriend. "I'm a person that will always speak my truth.
That's what I'm known for. So when the time is right, I will be," the 31-year-old star of Hulu's Secret Lives of Mormon Wives (SLOMW) said. At the time, ABC was still poised to proceed with the premiere of its flagship dating series on Sunday.
The network had been heavily promoting the show for months, even sending Paul to the Oscars the previous weekend, with the hope that the social media star would revitalise an ageing tentpole franchise. But those hopes soon turned into regrets, as ABC pulled the plug on Season 22 of The Bachelorette three days before its premiere - a first in The Bachelor franchise's 24-year history.
The decision came after 2023 footage of Paul was released online which appeared to show her attacking her ex-boyfriend with her daughter present. "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, and our focus is on supporting the family," a spokesperson for Disney Entertainment Television said.
The sudden about-face raises embarrassing questions for the broadcaster, not least about its judgment in hiring someone whose history of violence was known, and has thrown the future of one of television's most beloved franchises into doubt. Soon after Disney pulled the plug, Paul and her ex-boyfriend, Dakota Mortensen, with whom she shares a son, released duelling statements with fresh allegations about their turbulent relationship.
He was also granted temporary custody of their son, according to a court protective order. Neither Paul or Mortensen responded to the BBC's requests for comment for this story.
Their fraught romance has been a key SLOMW plotline and made for uncomfortable reunions on their Hulu series, which lifts the veil on the scandals and tribulations of a group of mums from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, who also happened to be social media influencers.
Paul, a divorced mum-of-three, was a standout star among the women, and her "messy" reputation became part of her brand. She earned national fame - or infamy - in 2022 when she announced that she and her husband Tate Paul were divorcing, and that they had been "soft-swinging" with other couples within their mostly Mormon circle.
That notoriety helped launch the hit show on Hulu and on Disney - which owns both ABC and Hulu. The network appeared to bank on that cross-promotion and corporate synergy by casting her as The Bachelorette to resuscitate its long-term decline in ratings. "We are really curious to peel back the layers and see the secrets of messy lives.
We don't want the sanitised version," said Jo Hemmings, who has worked with reality TV productions in the UK, including Big Brother, to vet potential contestants. Paul, who has more than six million followers on TikTok and two million on Instagram, was supposed to breathe new life into ABC's Bachelorette, which has not aired since 2024 after weathering a series of PR nightmares in front of and behind the camera.
Its formula was simple: an all-American woman, usually a rejected contestant from The Bachelor, dates a slew of eligible men to hopefully find the one and bestow upon him a final rose, earning a marriage proposal. Paul, the first contestant not to be plucked from the Bachelor Nation, broke that mould in many ways.
Many of the allegations that resurfaced this week were common knowledge, which has left some wondering why ABC chose to risk casting Paul. In fact, SLOMW's debut episode in 2024 kicked off with separate footage of the 2023 domestic violence incident that torpedoed The Bachelorette this week.