Reality royalty.
“The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” star Taylor Frankie Paul has been named the lead of Season 22 of “The Bachelorette.”
The move is historic for the ABC franchise, given all previous Bachelorettes came from a season of “The Bachelor.” The male-led series did this once, when Matt James became the Bachelor in 2021.
Paul, 31, shared the “surreal” news on Wednesday’s episode of Alex Cooper’s “Call Her Daddy” podcast.
“It has not hit me right now in this moment,” the TikTok sensation explained. “I’m just thinking about it, and it’s not real. And it’s not going to be until I think the limo is pulling up, you know? And meeting the people.”
Paul expressed that she was in disbelief when she was picked to be on the dating show.
“We had a meeting. I still didn’t believe it until i got the invitation, ‘Will you be our Bachelorette?’ Same reaction, shaking, pacing back and forth,” she shared. “There’s no way, no way.”
Here’s everything you need to know about Taylor Frankie Paul.
She was at the center of a soft-swinging scandal
Paul became notorious in 2022 when she revealed she was involved in a Mormon soft-swinging circle that resulted in her divorce from her first husband, Tate Paul.
“The whole group was intimate with each other,” Paul revealed on a TikTok livestream at the time. “Tate has made out with several girls and other things, and I’ve made out with all of the husbands and vice versa.”
“I feel free, to be honest,” Paul also said of letting the cat out of the bag. “It was a secret that we had been keeping from family and other friends.”
When announcing her divorce at the time, Paul explained that the couple agreed they wouldn’t “go all the way” with anyone else, but she “did step out of that agreement” and fell in love with one of the other husbands.
She stars in ‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’
“The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” on Hulu follows a group of Mormon mom influencers, called #MomTok, in the aftermath of the sex scandal that rocked their community.
Paul stars in the hit show alongside Mayci Neeley, Jennifer Affleck, Demi Engemann, Whitney Leavitt, Mikayla Matthews, Jessi Ngatikaura and Layla Taylor. Miranda McWhorter joined the cast in Season 2.
Season 3 comes out in November. Affleck and Leavitt are both competing on the new season of “Dancing With the Stars.”
On “Call Her Daddy,” Paul revealed that she gave her “SLOMW” co-stars a heads up about her “Bachelorette” casting.
“I think most of them are going to be happy for me and support me,” she said. “I can’t speak for everyone and what they actually truly think, you know never really know. But I think we’re all kind of doing our own thing so everyone is getting their own shots, it’s not just about her her her.”
She has three kids
Paul shares daughter Indy, 8 and son Ocean, 5, with her ex-husband Tate, and son Ever True, 1, with her ex-boyfriend, Dakota Mortensen.
The reality star and Mortensen broke up in late 2024. Their relationship struggles have played out on the Hulu show.
On “Call Her Daddy,” Paul revealed that she hesitated saying yes to “The Bachelorette” because of her family life.
“How do I make this work? I’m a co-parent I have two baby daddies not one, so I’m dealing with two different people, my children, my home base is here. Can I travel that long? Can I be gone that long?” she explained.
“But then I’m also thinking on the side, the other two moms that are in my group are doing ‘Dancing With the Stars’ and they brought their family out, but also they have their husbands. So for me I’m like, is this possible for me to do as a single mom?” Paul continued. “Can I make it work realistically no matter how much I want this? And I was like, I can, if you want to you can and it comes down to that so I was just like, I will make it work … I can ask for help more.”
She was arrested for domestic violence in 2023
In Feb. 2023, Paul and Mortensen got into a fight that led to Paul’s arrest. She allegedly threw a phone, a wooden play set and “heavy metal chairs” at Mortensen, and one of the chairs apparently hit one of her children.
Paul was charged with aggravated assault but avoided jail time after taking a plea deal. Her other charges — two counts of domestic violence in the presence of a child, child abuse with injury and criminal mischief — were all dismissed with prejudice.
A few months before the incident, Paul announced she was expecting her first baby with Mortensen, but she then suffered an ectopic pregnancy.
“I think I just, you know, went a little crazy and I could not take the pain,” Paul told The Post in an exclusive interview last year.
“I feel like I was really struggling post-divorce,” Paul shared. “I lost a baby and then I had a chemical pregnancy, so there was just so much in little time, while I’m obviously healing from a divorce. It was so much, and everything was public.”
“And I felt like that night, as bad as it was, was a really big wake-up call,” she acknowledged. “Like, ‘Taylor, you need to get help.’ So I immediately got into classes, went to therapy and changed for the better.”
“The Bachelorette” Season 22 will premiere in 2026 on ABC.
