“The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” are about to go public

REALITY TV

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The scandalous world of a group of Mormon mom influencers implodes when they get caught in the midst of a swinging sex scandal that makes international headlines. FRED HAYES — DISNEY

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By Jessica Roy

The New York Times

In the summer of 2022, the world of Mormon influencers was rocked by a scandal that even their most dedicated followers did not see coming. Taylor Frankie Paul, a married TikTok influencer and mother of two, announced in a TikTok livestream that she and her husband had decided to get a divorce after “soft swinging” with other Mormon couples in their Salt Lake City-area friend group.

The public admission prompted denials from Paul’s friend group, cheating accusations and even more shocking revelations, all of which have followed the so-called #MomTok influencers ever since.

Now, the scandal and its aftermath have been documented for a new reality series for Hulu — the aptly titled “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” — which premiered Friday. Here’s what you need to know about the women, and the scandal, at the heart of the series.

OK, what is #MomTok?

“I created MomTok,” Paul, 30, declares in the trailer for the show.

MomTok is a nickname for a loose collection of popular young Mormon influencers who post TikTok videos of themselves dancing, lip-syncing and behaving in ways you wouldn’t necessarily expect religious women to behave. But that’s part of the point: Paul and her friends, including Mayci Neeley, Mikayla Mathews and Whitney Leavitt, say that MomTok is about subverting expectations of how Mormon wives and mothers should act.

“We are trying to change the stigma of the gender roles in the Mormon culture,” Neeley says in the trailer.

What supposedly went down between the women of MomTok?

On May 20, 2022, Paul announced in a lip-syncing video on TikTok that she was divorcing her husband, Tate Paul. Five days later, she followed up with a livestream in which she said that she and some of the other couples involved in MomTok had been “soft swinging,” which she says meant that she and her friends engaged in partner swapping while in the same room.

“It was like swapping in front of each other standing next to each other,” Taylor Paul explains in the Hulu trailer.

That practice — controversial on its own for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — eventually led to Paul “violating” the group’s swapping policies, in her words, by cheating with one of her friend’s husbands, resulting in her divorce and estrangement from many of the other MomTok women.

How did the other women react to Paul’s announcement?

While many have remained silent, some of the women, including Leavitt, Miranda McWhorter and Victoria Zalic, have denied ever engaging in “soft swinging.” Zalic and McWhorter have distanced themselves from Paul, but Leavitt will appear on “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” alongside her.

What happened to Paul after her “soft swinging” admission?

The trouble didn’t end there for Paul. Not long after announcing her divorce, Paul was arrested and charged with aggravated assault, two counts of domestic violence in the presence of a child, child abuse with injury and criminal mischief after being accused of attacking her new boyfriend, Dakota Mortensen. In August 2023, she pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, and the other charges were dismissed.

So now we’re getting a Hulu show about all of this?

Apparently, yes. Paul, along with Neeley, Mathews, Leavitt and a few other Mormon influencers, will be appearing on “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” to show the aftermath of the swinging scandal and Paul’s arrest, while also exploring what it takes to be a Mormon social media influencer.