Mormon moms run TikTok and now they run reality television too.
At the center of this modern online Mormon world is the Mormon influencer and mother of three, Taylor Frankie Paul. The internet clamored for the juicy details about Paul's life when she divulged on TikTok to her 4.5 million followers that she was getting divorced after what she dubbed "soft swinging" with her married friend group in Utah. During the TikTok livestream, Paul shared that she had fallen in love with one of the husbands she was swinging with and ultimately ended up divorcing her own husband of several years, with whom she shares two children.
Outside of the sex scandal that rocked Mormon TikTok, Paul is in a group of new-age influencing Mormon moms involved with content creation on TikTok called MomTok. The new Hulu reality television show, "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives" dives into the scandal around Paul. Still, mostly, the reality show highlights how members of the MomTok group are currently attempting to rewrite narratives around Mormon women and whether MomTok can withstand outside pressure and drama. While the drama around Paul's life is the focal point of the show, the rest of MomTok has enough drama to fuel an eight-episode season filled with Mormon women dismantling the notoriously conservative values of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Here's all the juicy details about Paul, MomTok and Hulu's "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives":
The "soft swinging" scandal
Paul is the main character of Mormon TikTok, the Mom influencer who stunned the platform when she revealed to her followers that her MomTok friends and her were involved in what she dubbed as "soft swinging." Soft swinging is defined as "a form of ethical non-monogamy, as long as all parties are aware and consenting."
In 2022, she shared that her then-husband Tate Paul — who she was divorcing — had an open relationship with other couples in MomTok. During the live stream, Paul did not reveal the names of people she and her ex-husband had had a relationship with. She described that none of the couples went "all the way" with each other unless their spouse was in the room, The Cut reported. She said in the video, “The whole group was intimate with each other.”
But Paul later admitted that she did go all the way with someone in the group, revealing that she had feelings for an unnamed man. “To be honest, we had an agreement, like all of us, and I did step out of that agreement.”
“It wasn’t like I was going around, like, hooking up with my friend’s husband. It was like, we were at a party, I got belligerent, and we went and messed around by ourselves rather than the whole group,” she said.
In the TikTok live, Paul said she was isolated from her friends even though "no one was innocent." Paul also said that she wasn't the only one who had feelings for people in the group.
“There are three divorces in our friend group right now,” she said. “One not really to do with this situation, but there are two of us who are getting divorced.”
While Paul exposed her own involvement in the swinging she did not share who else was involved — she said in the live that most of MomTok isn't involved. However, former members of the group Miranda McWhorter and her husband Chase were accused of being a part of the swinging. They denied the claims stating that Miranda fell out with Paul due to a rumor that Paul allegedly started about Chase being interested in Paul. Another member, Camille Munday, was also rumored to be in the group, but Paul denied these claims.
Other MomTokers — Mayci Neeley, Whitney Leavitt, and Victoria Zalic — also denied the swinging allegations with statements on TikTok.
"The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives" premieres on Hulu and blows up
Shortly after the sex scandal shook up Mormon TikTok, the MomTok group began filming a new reality television show, "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives." However, the sex scandal wasn't the only chaos swirling around Paul and her co-stars and friends.
In 2023, Paul was arrested on assault and domestic violence after a physical altercation with her new boyfriend Dakota Mortensen. The fallout of the altercation between Mortensen and Paul was filmed for the pilot of "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives." The distraught Paul also suffered an ectopic pregnancy alongside pleading guilty to one of the charges against her. The influencer took a plea deal and was on probation during the filming of the first season. She described the incident as "hitting rock bottom."
After the first episode, Paul's arrest and ectopic pregnancy, the reality show jumps forward a year in the second episode. It features members of MomTok such as Whitney Leavitt, Layla Taylor, Demi Engemann, Jessi Ngatikaura, Jen Affleck, Mikayla Matthews and Mayci Neeley. Most of the conflict in the series focuses on the division between the values and morals of the conservative and more progressive members of the group clashing against each other, calling each other "sinners" and "saints."
Members of MomTok like Ngatikaura, Neeley and Engemann are staunch advocates for a new version of Mormonism that fights against abuse and constraints the conservative church and its members have held and inflicted against LDS women.
However, this has not been an easy road for MomTok in the Mormon community. Ngatikaura explained in an interview with ABC4, "Seeing the backlash from our community has been rough, but I also think that if they gave it a chance they would realize it’s just an empowering show about women in this religion and culture but navigating it differently because we’re all imperfect humans."
"The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives" is available to stream on Hulu.
