A ‘Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ Star Is the New Bachelorette

Taylor Frankie Paul is the next Bachelorette.

The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star, 31, was announced as The Bachelorette Season 22’s leading lady Wednesday on Call Her Daddy, surprising fans of both the ABC dating show and Hulu hit series.

Paul admitted to host Alex Cooper that it was “surreal” to be announced as the next Bachelorette. “It has not hit me right now in this moment,” she said. “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.”

The MomTok social media star explained that conversations with ABC execs began after she made a humorous TikTok about becoming the Bachelorette. “Then once I did, people started tagging The Bachelorette, like, ‘You should, you should, you should,’” she recalled. “I don’t know if that got their attention or someone was like, ‘Yeah, maybe.’ It was a joke to me, like unattainable.”

Paul, who entered the public eye back in 2022 when her divorce from Tate Paul launched a soft-swinging scandal that rocked the Mormon community, shares two children with her ex-husband and a son with her recent ex-boyfriend, Dakota Mortensen.

Paul admitted the logistics of balancing co-parenting, participating in The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and becoming the Bachelorette were complicated.

“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?” Paul recalled wondering.

“But then I’m also thinking on the side, the other two moms that are in my group [Jen Affleck and Whitney Leavitt] 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? Can I make it work realistically, no matter how much I want this?” she continued. “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.”

The response of her fellow Mormon Wives stars has been “all positive,” Paul said. “Everyone was like, ‘This is exactly like what you need,’ and I think it’s more so like, ‘Get out of the cycle you’ve been in,’” she said. “Obviously, I’ve been kind of repeating the same things, and it’s just like, it’s uncomfortable, it’s unknown, but do it, you know?”

Paul’s complicated relationship with Mortensen, as well as her 2023 arrest on suspicion of domestic violence after an altercation between the two, was chronicled on The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Paul later pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and was sentenced to probation.

Paul’s casting comes as a surprise to Bachelor Nation, not only because of her fame on the hit Hulu show, but because Wednesday’s announcement was originally billed as revealing the next Bachelor, as ABC confirmed in March that The Bachelorette would be taking a break and was unlikely to return in 2025.

The Bachelorette Season 22 will premiere in 2026 on ABC, while The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives returns for Season 3 on Hulu on Nov. 13.