In casting Taylor Frankie Paul for ‘Bachelorette,’ ABC was playing with fire

“What were they thinking?”

This is the question on everyone’s mind of “The Bachelorette’s” producers, ABC, Hulu and the Disney legal team.

On Thursday, ABC announced that the heavily promoted new season of “The Bachelorette,” scheduled to premiere Sunday, would not be moving forward “at this time.” Why not? Well, the Bachelorette in question, “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” star Taylor Frankie Paul, was the subject of a second domestic assault investigation as a damning video from her first, in which she pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, made the rounds courtesy of TMZ. Filming for Season 5 of “Mormon Wives,” which Paul executive produces, was also abruptly halted.

The disturbing video is hard to watch. Not so much because Paul puts on-again, off-again partner Dakota Mortensen into a headlock and then pelts him with metal bar stools — sadly, this is a scene that would not be out of place on many reality shows — but because a small child is in the room. After one of the stools bounces toward the camera, Paul’s then-5-year-old daughter Indy begins crying and Mortensen later says “help your child.” Even as the child cries “Mommy,” Paul continues on her rampage. When Mortensen belatedly attempts to help Indy, Paul screams at him to “get away from my child.”

And while “Bachelorette” producers and Disney lawyers may not have seen the video, which was introduced in the 2023 court case, the police report makes it clear that Indy was injured during the incident, noting a “goose egg” on the child’s head. Paul was charged with aggravated assault, child abuse and domestic violence in the presence of a child. Paul, who said she had been drinking before the incident, pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated assault, a third-degree felony. The other charges were dismissed and Paul, who was put on probation, submitted a plea of abeyance. In August 2026, a court will review the assault charge and, if Paul complies with the terms of her probation, could lessen it to a misdemeanor.

Should a new criminal charge be made after the current investigation, all bets are off.

So was it the emergence of the video or the possibility of a felony conviction that caused ABC to put this season of “The Bachelorette” on ice? Does the reason matter?

ABC knew that Paul had been charged in a domestic violence incident that led to the injury of her child and somehow thought she would make an excellent Bachelorette anyway.

What were they thinking?

“The Bachelorette” Season 22 billboard starring Taylor Frankie Paul is seen on Thursday — the day her season was axed.

(HIGHFIVE / Bauer-Griffin / GC Images via Getty Images)

They were thinking that audiences like messy “authenticity,” and it doesn’t get any more authentically messy than 31-year-old Paul, who climbed to social media fame by founding MomTok, a TikTok community of married Mormon women dancing, joking and pushing against the traditions and restrictions of their faith. Pretty and profane, funny and frank, Paul amassed a large following. After Paul discussed the “soft swinging” she and her husband engaged in with other Mormon couples, the group went viral and led to the creation of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” the first episode of which was titled “The First Book of Taylor.”

Chronicling the fallout from the “soft-swinging” scandal, the first season built on Paul’s frank discussions of her chaotic life; it was Hulu’s most-watched unscripted season premiere of 2024. The subsequent three seasons, in which the MomTokers deal with the pressures of fame, their romantic relationships and all manner of internal “Mean Girls” drama, have continued to grow the show’s audience even as ratings for “The Bachelor” franchise flagged.

To the algorithm, or a numbers cruncher, the hopes that Paul could bring some of the “Mormon Wives” magic to “The Bachelorette” might make sense.

Except Paul isn’t magic; she waves her red flags high and proud, and the good folks at ABC, Hulu and Disney charged at them with the oblivious desperation of so many trapped, maddened bulls. (It usually does not end well for the bulls either.)

The “soft swinging” led to her divorce from first husband, Tate Paul, with whom she has two children, including Indy. As chronicled on “Mormon Wives,” she began her turbulent relationship with Mortensen, with whom she shares a young son, Ever. Her 2023 arrest was a storyline — she called it one of the rock bottoms of her life, though in a recently resurfaced TikTok video, she brags about throwing things and being arrested — and in Season 4 she was found in bed with Mortensen, with whom she had allegedly broken up, on the morning she was supposed to fly to L.A. to film “The Bachelorette.” (She caught a later flight.) The season finale ended with the possibility that Paul might be pregnant.

Reality cross-pollination has become so increasingly popular — ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” couldn’t live without it, and Peacock’s hit show “The Traitors” is built on it — that there seems to be little thought given to the apples-versus-oranges fact that not every reality show is the same. “Bachelorette” producers not only ignored the misgivings voiced by their own fans, many of whom did not think Paul would be approaching the show as a truly single woman searching for love, they reportedly extended her many freedoms denied other participants, including unmonitored use of her phone during filming.

They clearly wanted the ratings miracle that Paul’s unvarnished wildness had lent “Mormon Wives.”

Casting for maximum drama is a driving force in many reality shows. Even if one accepts that perfectly reasonable people are happy to live in a bubble with strangers for months in hopes of achieving love, fame or a cash prize, someone inevitably is cast to bring the crazy, er, conversation-sparking personality. And like all of television, reality is facing splintered and waning audiences so the decibel level of that conversation-sparking is often dialed way up.

Hence the ascendancy of Taylor Frankie Paul, queen of MomTok and “Mormon Wives,” a woman known for her lack of filter and habit of putting it all out there. For the purposes of our entertainment.

There is, of course, no point in mentioning the many past, and often show-derailing, scandals of the genre — the suicides, the racism, the sexual assault, homophobia, bullying, pedophilia, infidelity and just general ghastliness that has arisen from the popularity of people sharing their “real” lives. Audiences connect with these shows, the messier the better.

But, as it turns out, some messes are too big to leverage even for forgiving eyeballs of reality fans.

“The Bachelor” franchise should have known better. It’s been around for almost a quarter-century and has suffered its fair share of scandals during those years. But drafting a woman who was convicted of assault in an incident that harmed her own child, well, “The Bachelorette” knew it was playing with fire.

Clearly they hoped she would rekindle the dying embers of the show.

Instead, she burnt it down.