Why Taylor Frankie Paul was cast as the next Bachelorette
Taylor Frankie Paul went from social media videos to leading one of the most popular dating shows.
How does someone who was famous for being a wife, and is now under investigation for alleged domestic assault find herself as one of the most eligible single women in the country?
This baffling question surrounds Taylor Frankie Paul, from the hit Hulu show “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” who was announced as the next “Bachelorette,” to be featured starting March 22 on the eponymous reality dating show where an eligible woman tries to find a husband from a group of 25 bachelors.
It’s unclear whether the controversy surrounding Paul will impact whether “The Bachelorette” will indeed premiere as scheduled. A spokesperson for the Draper City Police Department told media outlets earlier this week that they are investigating claims of domestic assault between Paul and her previous boyfriend, Dakota Mortensen. No charges had been filed as of March 18.
Paul told People magazine on March 17 that the allegations are “heavy” and “unfortunate”, especially given the timing coinciding with her season premiere. She did not confirm or deny the allegations.
This is not the first time Paul has been in trouble with the law. In February 2023, she was charged with one felony count of assault, two felony counts of domestic violence in the presence of a child and misdemeanor counts for child abuse and criminal mischief for an alleged domestic incident with Mortensen, according to Salt Lake County court records. The Salt Lake City Tribune later reported Paul entered a plea in abeyance for the felony charge which means a defendant will have the charges dismissed if they adhere to certain conditions after a period of time. The other charges were dismissed with prejudice, the newspaper reported.
Why would ABC, the network behind “The Bachelorette” take a chance in casting Paul as the lead given her history?
Steven Granelli, a pop culture expert and teaching professor of communication studies at Northeastern University, told Northeastern Global News (NGN) that he suspects Paul’s “penchant for scandal” and connection with “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” was part of the appeal of casting her.
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“You already have the audience who will tune into every season of “The Bachelor/Bachelorette” regardless of who is cast,” Granelli said. “Now you have the additional audience who is hoping for a continuation of storylines from “Secret Lives” added in.”
Casting Paul may have seemed like a wise business move at the time, but the recent allegations have had an impact. Baked goods chain Cinnabon announced they were canceling a brand deal with “The Bachelorette” and Paul in light of the allegations against her.
Hayat Bearat, director of the Domestic Violence Law Institute at Northeastern, told NGN that ABC may have overlooked Paul’s history given that most of the charges were dropped.
Additionally, Bearat said sometimes domestic incidents where the woman is the aggressor are dismissed given that the assumption among many is that a woman can’t harm a man.
But, she said, a show that encourages romantic relationships should take these types of allegations even more seriously given the vulnerable position they put contestants in.
“My gut feeling is they’re doing this for viewership,” Bearat added.
Another interesting sidebar: The casting of Paul, 31, will mark one of the first times that an actor from a prior season of the the 24-year-old ABC network show wasn’t chosen to lead a future season of the show.
This choice highlights a shifting mindset in the world of entertainment, Northeastern University experts told NGN, where executives tend to have a low tolerance for risk. They instead want stars with an existing audience that will follow them as they move to bigger platforms, and social media influencers like Paul offer just that.
“This is the attention economy,” said Amy Pei, an assistant marketing professor who researches influencers and social media. “If people are already following [an influencer like Paul] and paying attention to her, they’re going to continue to follow her. You can bring in a whole new audience.”
Earlier in the 2000’s, Paul found fame through “#MomTok,” a community of Mormon moms in Utah who created TikTok videos together. With their matching workout gear and long hair styled into loose waves with sleek ends (known as “Utah curls”), short videos of the women dancing to pop music gained traction online. Some of the women said they gained up to 60,000 followers in a week.
These are exactly the types of celebrities who hold appeal to brands and casting directors, Northeastern experts said. Even though the audience spends more time on social media per week than they spend watching TV — indeed research from the marketing firm GWI recently found that consumers spend over 13 hours a week on social media versus about nine hours watching some form of TV — it opens potential new doors.
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Casting influencers is a way to spark viewers’ investment in other types of media, according to Granelli. He pointed out that even the latest season of the Netflix dating show “Love is Blind,” which aired its season finale earlier this month, featured participants who already had thousands of social media followers.
“If [networks] populate their reality shows with influencers, they’re bringing in all of their disparate audiences…at the start,” Granelli said.
It’s the calculation that Hulu, a streaming subsidiary of Disney, seemed to have made when they helped #MomTok make the leap from phone screens to TV screens.
When the first season of “The Secret Lives of Mormon” Lives aired in September 2024, the eight women featured had a collective 18.17 million TikTok followers. The show became Hulu’s most watched season premiere among unscripted shows that year. Three more seasons quickly followed, with the latest having been released just this month.
Since then, the show has built an eager audience ready to follow the moms through their different ventures.
Simone Lord, 26, of Brookline, Mass., prefers watching prestige TV shows like “The Bear,” a comedy-drama that highlights a chef who takes over his family’s sandwich shop, or sitcoms like “New Girl,” about the daily shenanigans of a school teacher who moves in with three single men after a bad breakup. She has never watched a full season of “The Bachelorette,” but she said she was keen to tune in this time because of Paul.
“The cross-promotion is a smart move,” she told NGN. “It makes me care about something I never cared about before.”
But if these influencers resonate with an audience, Granelli said networks will continue using the tried-and-tested formulas. It’s why the Bravo show “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” has spin-offs like “VanderPump Rules” and “VanderPump Villa.” It’s also why two “Mormon Wives” stars, Jen Affleck and Whitney Leavitt, competed in the latest season of “Dancing with the Stars.” These shows, along with “The Bachelorette” are all under the Disney umbrella.
And as long as it works, it’ll continue, Granelli said.
“We’re going to be fed the same stuff if we keep watching the same stuff,” he added. In a way, we, the viewers, “are much more risk-averse,” he said.
