These Mormon influencers turned their shocking scandal into a reality TV show. It’s been good for business.
One day in January 2022, TikToker Taylor Frankie Paul took a break from her regular content like modeling Shein tops and doing sponsored day-in-the-life videos to get sentimental.
“I’d love to see people’s love story. Here’s mine,” she captioned a 30-second video, encouraging her followers to turn the idea into “a new trend.” The TikTok flashes from pictures of her husband Tate proposing, to snaps of her pregnant belly, to professionally shot photos of their two children, Indy and Ocean, as Olivia Rodrigo’s song “Favorite Crime” plays.
Juxtaposed with her other content, like tongue-in-cheek incest jokes and dance videos with other young Mormon moms, the sincere clip of Paul’s young family resonated with her followers: It has over 420,000 likes.
Less than three years later, Paul’s life looks very different. For one, Tate is now her ex-husband. She has a new boyfriend, Dakota Mortensen, and they welcomed a child together in March 2024. She’s also the star of a hit new reality TV series.
Paul, 30, wrangled herself the latter not by continuing to make feel-good content about her picture-perfect family but by blowing it up entirely. In May 2022, mere months after her love story video, she shocked a corner of TikTok by announcing she and Tate were divorcing. Not only that, but they were divorcing because she crossed the boundaries of a “soft swinging” arrangement they had with other unnamed couples implied to be part of their friend group when she developed feelings for a friend’s husband. The revelation that some of these TikTokers were swingers blew the lid open on MomTok — a group of loosely associated Mormon Moms on TikTok — inviting both media attention and controversy.
Scandal can be anathema to content creators who rely on brand deals to make a living, but the right kind of scandal can be a boon. Paul’s decision to go public with the end of her marriage and the messy details of her friends’ romantic lives has turned out to be her best business move yet — both for her and the friends who came along for the ride when reality TV producers came knocking.
“The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” which premiered on Sept. 6, broke streaming records for Hulu, becoming its most-watched unscripted season premiere in 2024 so far. That’s already translating into even more followers for Paul and the rest of the show’s influencer cast. In the week and change since the series premiered, Paul has gained hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok and Instagram, according to Social Blade data; her TikTok following now sits at 4.5 million.
The decision to do the show in the wake of her divorce and swinging scandal was an easy yes for Paul. “Back in 2022, I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it,'” Paul tells me in September over sodas at Cool Sips, a beverage stand that brings Utah-style “dirty sodas” — think Dr. Pepper with sweet syrup and cream — to New York City. “It was an opportunity to tell more of my story, and at the time, I also had like nothing else to lose. I just lost almost everything.”
Still, doing a reality series is a grind, even compared to the demands of managing an influencing career as a mother. Not only is there the filming — the “Mormon Wives” cast filmed most of the season over a period of eight weeks, and Paul and her friend and castmate Mayci Neeley say they were generally on the hook for five days a week during that time — but there’s press obligations like this one, too.
Both Paul and Neeley, 29, who are doing a tandem press tour in New York for the show, hope that getting candid for cameras that aren’t their own will pay off for their careers in the long run.
“The exposure, it’s a different level,” Paul says of reality TV fame. “It’s just like that: use your name for any business you want to start.”
‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ began with a controversy that was hard to top
“The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” was born from controversy: first, Paul’s “soft swinging” scandal, and later, her February 2023 arrest following a reported domestic violence incident involving her boyfriend, Dakota Mortensen. She entered a plea agreement in August of that year, which included three years of probation.
Paul’s arrest threw a wrench into production, which had started filming in 2022. When production approached Paul about continuing to film the series after her arrest, she had to weigh the effect the show would have on her relationship with Mortensen — particularly salient given that she was pregnant at the time with their son Ever True — with the business opportunities the show could provide.
“I was like, ‘I feel like I want to do it, and you can support me, or you don’t have to do it,'” she tells B-17. “It was totally up to him, and I think he wanted to do it to support me too.”
Dakota Mortensen and Taylor Frankie Paul.
But reality TV isn’t another one of Paul’s TikToks, meaning she had little to no control over how her arrest — which she’s described as the “worst night” of her life — would be portrayed onscreen.
The show’s premiere ultimately cast Paul in something other than the flattering glow of a ring light when it used actual bodycam footage of the arrest to tell Paul’s story, before picking up 11 months later to discuss the aftermath.
For Neeley, exchanging control over her image for more exposure was more liberating than worrying. Sure, she sometimes worried that small creative decisions, like the cast’s uniform blue coats in the show’s opening sequence, would make them look “stupid” (or in that case, she says, “polygamist”), but overall, it was a net positive.
“I liked it, because I feel like I could show my personality. Just be myself, and forget cameras were there,” she says of filming the series. “With social media, I feel like I have a hard time sharing my real personality, because it’s like, you’re setting up your phone. It’s just not the same.”
Mayci Neeley on “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.”
Subjecting yourself to reality TV editors can be risky — but if it works, it’s great for business
Prior to “Mormon Wives,” Neeley already had a business of her own: Babymama, a line of natal nutrition gummies. Though she’d been developing the business for a few years, she says she kicked things into high gear once she knew that the show was a go to capitalize on the exposure it would bring. Something she didn’t consider? Whether scenes featuring her business would make the final edit.
“When I heard how many things were getting cut, I was like, ‘Oh my God, thank God,'” she recalls. “I was so scared, but it made the cut.”
It didn’t hurt that her business ended up becoming a backdrop to some of the show’s key storylines: first, a photoshoot where Paul and Neeley discuss Neeley’s reservations about Mortensen, and second, a launch party where the absence of Whitney Leavitt, the cast’s resident frenemy, serves as the final nail in the coffin for her relationship with the rest of the group.
Even when it’s chock-full of drama, the show has already been a boon for business, Neeley says. Now, she’s already thinking about how she’ll devise ways to keep getting exposure for Babymama on the show in a potential season two.
“If I do throw an event, how am I going to keep it interesting enough to stay in the edit?” she says. “That’s what I’m thinking now, when I saw certain things that were cut. I’m like, ‘Okay, well, if I’m going to throw something, I’ve got to make it really good.'”
In the meantime, Paul, Neeley, and the rest of the cast have millions of followers to contend with on social media — many of whom have just devoured season one and are curious where the group’s key relationships, friendships, and beefs stand today.
Since this is a cast of influencers, they’re leaning in to the drama by posting more content. Neeley and Mortensen have beef during the series, but on TikTok, the two of them and Paul are making videos poking fun at her protectiveness. Other members of the cast are furthering the season’s drama around Leavitt, while Paul is making tongue-in-cheek videos about how her “questionable life choices” got her friends a TV series.
“I think it’s a win-win for both of us, for us and for Hulu, because we’re promoting and we’re also getting the views and the attention,” Neeley says.
“At the end of the day, that’s how you get paid. So for our business, I feel like that’s how it helps us work too and get our brand deals,” Paul adds.
In the wake of season one’s success, Paul and Neeley are already making savvy plans for a future with multiple revenue streams. Content creation isn’t forever, after all — Paul is considering getting into real estate and owning more properties.
“We don’t want to be 40 years old doing MomTok videos still, right?” Neeley says. “We want to make sure we have businesses in place so we don’t have to feel like we have to show up on social media constantly.”
As we sip on our dirty sodas, thousands of miles away from Salt Lake City, Paul puts it plainly.
“At the end of the day, you’re only relevant for so long.”
