Deep Dive: The Rise & Fall of Taylor Frankie Paul
From online spectacle to national scandal -- a story of self sabotage
By now, it’s likely you’ve been introduced to Taylor Frankie Paul, the Utah-based Mormon TikTokker-turned-reality star and the Bachelorette who never was. While she’s achieved mainstream stardom, she was once a niche internet rabbit hole to fall down.
But recently, she’s been in the headlines for her messy on-and-off relationship with her youngest child’s father, Dakota Mortensen, but as of this weekend, her ex-husband, Tate Paul, has entered the chat after filing for sole custody and a temporary restraining order. Taylor took to Instagram to air out the dirty details, and she brought receipts.
Until this point, Tate has largely remained in the background, stepping out of the public eye after he and Taylor split in 2022. To understand the full dynamics at play, we have to go back to the beginning.
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The Early Days
Taylor Paul and Tate Paul married in 2016 when they were 22 and 24-years-old, respectively, before welcoming their oldest child, Indy, a girl, in 2017. They would go on to have their second child, Ocean, a boy in 2020. The same year Ocean was born, Taylor, alongside other young Mormon moms, Camille Munday and Miranda McWhorter, began collaborating on TikTok to create content that showcased a different side of Mormon motherhood. The content was lifestyle-focused and mixed in viral dance trends. The husbands also made appearances and eventually created their own platforms.
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The Ascent
As they gained popularity, the content also evolved to feature a satirical element that poked fun at Mormon stereotypes. This level of self-deprecation was what caused such intrigue. Taylor was the mastermind behind much of the trolling. She posted videos with captions suggesting she was the 50-year-old mother of Camille and Miranda who successfully passed themselves off as twins, or joking about being sister-wives. She also wore green contact lenses to lean into comments that pointed out that she and her then-husband, Tate, looked related.
The hashtag #MomTok was later coined by Taylor alongside Whitney Leavitt, Mikayla Matthews and Mayci Neeley in January of 2022, and the group expanded to welcome others including Jessi Draper, Jen Affleck and Demi Engemann. The women were on top of the world, most of them becoming the breadwinners in their marriages, and moving into huge, brand new houses thanks to their newfound online fame.
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The Scandal
Thirteen months after Taylor reached one million followers, she abruptly announced her divorce from Tate, posting a video of herself moving into her own place. At first, people suspected she was trolling again, but soon it was clear that it was no joke. On May 25, 2022, Taylor took to TikTok Live to bare all about the scandal that led to her divorce, to correct the rumor that she was a “cheater” or a “husband stealer,” which she was being called in her comments, referencing rumors swirling around Utah.
She stated the majority of her friend group were involved in “soft swinging” — meaning she and Tate could engage in everything short of intercourse with other people, with both spouses required to be present for any activity. The rule she and the other man broke was twofold: full intercourse, and emotional/romantic attachment (”catching feelings”). She correctly predicted that the others involved would deny involvement.
She implicated Brayden and Mckenna Rowley and identified Brayden as the other half of the affair at hand. In addition, she named Selver and Victoria Zalic; Chase and Miranda McWhorter; Conner and Whitney Leavitt; Samuel and Camille Munday. Selver Zalic was later cleared via a TikTok Taylor herself shared, confirming he wasn’t involved. Camille, Whitney and Miranda both denied involvement on their own channels shortly after and unfollowed Taylor on social media.
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Divorce to Dakota
Immediately following her divorce from Tate, Taylor got serious with her new beau, Dakota Mortensen. He was quickly slated into Tate’s previous place in her TikTok content. From the beginning, Taylor and Dakota’s relationship was unstable, the pair frequently breaking up and getting back together, accusing each other of cheating, and eventually physical violence. More on that later… Taylor became pregnant more than once within the first year of their relationship, but each ended in pregnancy loss. The couple then welcomed their son Ever True in March 2024.
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The TV Career
The reality TV show, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, first shot the pilot in February 2023 before being greenlit and picked up by Hulu. The original cast members included Taylor Paul, Whitney Leavitt, Jessi Ngatikaura, Jen Affleck, Demi Engemann, Mikayla Matthews, Mayci Neeley and Layla Taylor, as Miranda McWhorter and Camille Munday declined to participate in season one.
The show picked up nearly a year after the first episode, filming between January and March of 2024. Season one, premiering that September, documents Taylor’s re-entry into the MomTok fold post-scandal — her own bodycam arrest footage anchors the pilot, and her rocky standing with Whitney becomes the season’s core tension. Season two, airing March 2025, revisits her pregnancy with Ever and the lead-up to his birth; it also brings Miranda McWhorter into the cast, confirming her own involvement in the original swinging arrangement and reopening the 2022 story for a new audience. That same season airs the reveal that Dakota cheated on Taylor shortly after Ever’s birth, ending their relationship on camera.
By season three, Taylor’s “sinner amid saints” framing has calcified into the show’s most consistent throughline, and season four — covering fall 2025 — largely documents her preparing to leave the show to film The Bachelorette, but struggling to fully detach from her toxic dynamic with Dakota.
Taylor was announced as ABC’s next Bachelorette on September 10, 2025 via Call her Daddy, officially solidifying her as a mainstream celebrity. Her season filmed from late October through mid-December of 2025, which she documented behind the scenes via her TikTok. The season filmed for seven weeks, and she reportedly got engaged to one of the contestants, Doug Mason.
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From the outside, chaos in her life seemed to be subsiding, but off-camera and offline, a storm was brewing. Behind the scenes, the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives cast held a Zoom meeting with ABC to express concerns about ongoing abuse allegations between Taylor and Dakota, stressing the gravity of the situation on March 7, 2026. Then, the storm hit publicly.
Just three days before her Bachelorette season was set to premiere, Dakota had filed for a temporary restraining order. That same day, on March 19, 2026, a damning video surfaced via TMZ that featured footage from Taylor Frankie Paul’s 2023 domestic violence arrest, depicting her hitting, kicking, and throwing furniture at Dakota, accidentally hitting her child with a metal stool in the process. It was also revealed that Dakota and his roommate, Cru Eaton, had made multiple calls to the cops about Taylor in late February. They alleged that Dakota had visible scratches on his neck plus property damage — a broken car mirror, a damaged screen, a thrown drink. He says seeing the scratches was what pushed him to call. Immediately after these revelations, ABC announced it was pulling the season. Additionally, Cru claimed that Taylor had gotten engaged on The Bachelorette and then slept with Dakota the same day. Taylor corrected the record in a TikTok comment, where she stated it was actually the next day… Okay. Much better.
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The Aftermath
Since the season was shelved, the drama has continued to pick up steam. In April, a judge ruled that Taylor cannot have unsupervised time with her youngest son, Ever, but she was simultaneously granted a temporary restraining order against Dakota. She also announced that she was stepping back from the LDS church, and stopped filming season five of SLOMW to focus on her mental health.
In May, Taylor posted an emotional Mother’s Day post, seemingly calling out people in her inner circle like Miranda Hope (previously McWhorter), Mikayla Matthews and Layla Taylor for their comments about the leaked video footage. Layla stated, “My personal history as a survivor makes it impossible for me to stay silent. I stand firmly against domestic violence in any form,” while Miranda said, “Domestic violence and abuse of any kind is something I take very seriously... I cannot support that kind of behavior.”
June was an eventful month for Taylor. She scored a custody win when a Utah judge lifts the supervised-visitation requirement, granting Taylor alternating weekends plus one midweek day with her son Ever, and rumors started swirling that ABC was considering releasing her season after all, eyeing a mid-July premiere. According to TMZ, editors never stopped cutting the episodes after the March pull and have been conducting audience testing to gauge viewer sentiment toward Taylor.
Despite these small victories and positive momentum, Taylor received another blow on June 26, 2026, when Dakota contacted police once again, accusing Taylor of a protective order violation, though no charges have been filed as a result of this. Taylor took to social media to express her frustration, posting to her Instagram Story, “Cops called on me again THIS WEEK... what are the odds?” A few days later, on June 30, it was confirmed that Taylor checked herself into an inpatient mental health facility for a week willingly, but the timeline is confusing as she has not stopped posting online. The very same day she reportedly checked herself into a facility, Tate filed for sole custody of their two children and sought a temporary restraining order, which he did not successfully obtain.
In the early hours of July 3, she once again took to her Instagram stories to call out both Dakota and Tate, accusing them of “tag-teaming” her. Prior to this, by all accounts, Tate and Taylor coparented successfully, and in the posts, she points to this as the source of her feelings of betrayal. Taylor presented graphic images showcasing bruises and bite marks on her body, including when she was pregnant or newly postpartum. The stories included screenshots of conversations with Dakota where he was demeaning and controlling throughout their relationship, shaming her for posting TikToks or pictures with her “tits bulging,” weaved in with mentions of Tate’s support throughout this ordeal. It’s unclear whether Tate’s custody filing carries any weight.
What’s Next
The plain truth is that the Taylor Frankie Paul show has always been a trainwreck we can’t look away from. When she was just a TikTokker, her antics made for lighthearted gossip in niche reddit subs, but now that she has become a national spectacle, watching it continue to unfold on television and in the tabloids now feels exploitative and, well… sad.
Will the Bachelorette move forward to cash in on the drama, recouping the millions they’ll lose if they scrap it altogether? Will the Hulu show keep Dakota in the cast?
At what point does a scandal become a tragedy? And while you can never put the toothpaste back in the tube, at what point can someone so clearly ill-equipped for fame relinquish it?