Photo: @taylorfrankiepaul/TikTok
Two years ago, 28-year-old Mormon influencer and mother of two Taylor Frankie Paul hopped on TikTok to tell her 3.5 million followers that she was getting divorced after “soft swinging” with her friend group in Draper, Utah. Paul claimed to have fallen in love with one of the husbands she was swinging with, and other MomTokers scrambled to deny their involvement. Naturally, the entire story blew up, and now, Paul and a few of her Latter-day sisters star in a Hulu show, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, inspired by this ordeal. They threatened to “spill all the tea” on what really went down for over a year, and the show has already chronicled plenty of drama. Now that the season finale has aired, a second season is reportedly in the works with all the cast members. Here’s how we got here.
How did this all start?
Before all this, Paul was a staple of Mormon MomTok where she mostly posted dance videos with the occasional appearance from her then-husband, Tate Paul, and their two young kids, Indy and Ocean. She also did choreographed routines with a group of like-minded Mormon TikTok moms, including Camille Munday and Miranda McWhorter, who she often joked were her “sister wives.” Of course, that was before May 2022, when she used one of her lip-sync videos to reveal that she was separating from her husband, which she captioned “an unfortunate announcement.” Using audio from Miley Cyrus’s “Malibu,” Paul showed off what appeared to be a new set of keys, standing in an empty home. Text in the video read, “In my twenties, getting divorced, started therapy, living on my own for the first time ever along with two little kids.”
In a second video, Taylor hinted that there was more to the end of her marriage. A video of her moving boxes included the cryptic text, “My life falling apart. And I can’t even speak on why … without bringing them all down with me.” Meanwhile, fans on Reddit began noticing that some MomTokers were unfollowing Taylor and liking comments suggesting she’d cheated.
In a livestream on May 25, Taylor claimed that she and her husband had been in an open relationship and had an agreement with other couples in their friend group. In her video, she was careful not to name names but reported that she and her husband had been “soft swinging,” which, in her words, meant that no one went “all the way” together unless their spouses were in the room. “The whole group was intimate with each other,” she said in the video, which was swiftly reposted online.
However, Taylor said she violated the group’s soft-swapping policies. “To be honest, we had an agreement, like all of us, and I did step out of that agreement,” she said, confessing that she had gone “all the way” with someone in the group.
“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. Taylor insisted that it was “a one-time thing” but also admitted that she and the unnamed man “had feelings for each other.”
Taylor said that, in the aftermath of the incident, she was “shunned” by her friends, though she added that “no one was innocent.” She also claimed that there were other people in the group who “had feelings,” presumably for people that were not their spouses. “There are three divorces in our friend group right now,” she claimed. “One not really to do with this situation, but there are two of us who are getting divorced.” As for who exactly is involved, she said the “majority” of MomTok isn’t involved, and most of her TikTok friends have been supportive.
Taylor also said she and Tate were on good terms. She told fans that there were other reasons for the divorce, saying that the swinging incident was “the tip of the iceberg.”
Who else was involved in the swinging?
Following Taylor’s video, fans started to speculate that other MomTokers must have been connected to the drama. A number of MomTokers denied the rumors, including Miranda McWhorter and her husband Chase, who posted a video denying that they were involved in the swinging and claiming that Miranda had a falling out with Taylor because Taylor started a rumor that Chase had feelings for her. Taylor responded with yet another live video explaining that Chase and Miranda had told her to tell fans that they weren’t the couple involved. She also claimed to be on good terms with Miranda. Camille Munday, who Taylor previously said was never in the swinging crew because she and her husband brought “too much drama,” posted comments on an entirely different influencer’s account saying that she and her husband didn’t swing. Mayci Neeley, Whitney Leavitt, and Victoria Zalic have also posted videos saying they were never involved with swinging.
What has Taylor been up to since then?
Following the drama, Taylor posted an Instagram story thanking her family for “being so supportive during this time” and said that she was “overwhelmed.” Seeming to address rumors that she’d been sent a cease-and-desist letter, she added, “After talking with my legal team, I have all rights to share my story if wanted. However I feel that I shared a part and will not be sharing anything else from here on out.”
Obviously, she did not stop sharing. Taylor spent a few months posting updates on her life as a newly single mom and controversial TikTok sensation before a new guy, Dakota Mortensen, started appearing in her videos. Despite speculation that Mortensen is the man she swung “all the way with,” she explained in a later video that he slid into her DMs shortly after her swinging drama went down.
In 2023, Paul was arrested on assault and domestic-violence charges after admitting to police that she threw a wooden play set and metal chairs at Mortensen, one of which hit her 5-year-old daughter. She pleaded guilty to one of the charges and agreed to a plea deal in September. In a video posted after the plea deal, she described the incident as “hitting rock bottom” and said it “made me seek help that I wasn’t getting at the time,” adding that she felt “guilt, shameful, and embarrassed.”
Also in September of last year: Paul and Mortensen announced they were expecting a baby together, and since then her account has taken a hard turn toward pregnancy and postpartum content.
Taylor has also posted a few reunion videos with a group she calls Mormon MomTok, though her old friends Miranda and Camille haven’t appeared on her feed.
So, who’s made it to Hulu?
Pretty much everyone Taylor now posts with. A lot of her videos purporting to show her friend group’s “reunions” have film crews in them, so it seems like they’ve been taping pretty much since the friend-group implosion made it to TikTok, though commenters have expressed disappointment that this isn’t the OG crew. Besides Paul, the cast includes Whitney Leavitt, Layla Taylor, Demi Engemann, Jessi Ngatikaura, Mikayla Matthews, and Mayci Neeley. There’s also Jen Affleck, a woman who claims to be married to Ben Affleck’s distant cousin but appears not to have any traceable connection to his family.
Though Leavitt and her husband spent some time hashing out the revelation that he has secretly been on Tinder for the entirety of their marriage, and he also claims to have a porn addiction, everyone on the show denies having been involved in the swinging (except for Taylor).
Then what are we even doing here?
A lot, actually. Even without rumors that they’re making out with each other’s husbands, the Mormon women of Utah found plenty to feud about — the show’s first season focused mostly on Paul’s battle with Leavitt for the crown of MomTok queen bee. Leavitt left the group chat at the end of the season, purportedly with plans to get into homesteading (yep), but Hulu is reportedly on track to green-light a second season. Per Deadline, preproduction is already underway in Utah. The sodas can only get bigger from here.
This post has been updated.
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