A Mormon Wife gets the rose

This week it was announced that the star of the upcoming season of The Bachelorette would be none other than Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ Taylor Frankie Paul. While the franchise is known for making bold choices when it comes to who the next lucky lady might be, this is by far the biggest and boldest casting choice of all – for more reasons than one.

The first reason this comes as such a surprise is because the typical window for speculation on who they would cast wasn’t really available to fans this time around, given the fact that the series was put on pause after its last season. Usually, these announcements are made during the After the Final Rose specials, but with no special airing recently, the announcement seemingly came out of nowhere.

Second, the person chosen is usually someone from the most recent season, or at least someone with some sort of affiliation with the show. But as we know, Taylor hails from Hulu. But with Disney being the parent company of both Hulu and ABC, there could be a method to the madness.

The question on everyone’s mind is whether this is a genius move or a recipe for disaster. And in my opinion, not that I spend a sickening amount of time watching and analyzing trashy TV of course, the case can be made for either scenario – and we really won’t know until we watch it all unfold.

When it comes to why this might be the key to reviving this show, we have to take a look at who Taylor is and what she’s bringing with her. With her casting, she is essentially migrating over with the largest pre-existing social media following any Bachelorette lead in history has ever had. This is thanks to her role in MomTok, a group of Mormon women influencers who amassed a huge platform for themselves, so huge it inspired the show, Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, which became an instant hit when it premiered. I wrote about that here. The second reason her following has ballooned in recent years is because she is an undeniable fan favourite on Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, most admired for her brutal honesty, no nonsense approach to just about everything, and the vulnerability she displayed while navigating troubling times and infidelity with her youngest child’s father, Dakota.

As much as we all like to think there is overlap in reality TV audiences, not all shows are made equal, so that’s not always the case. It can be easy to assume that someone who never misses an episode of Real Housewives might also be tapped into Love Island, for example. But for a variety of reasons, which range from not having the time to simply not liking the cast or concept, that person may actually be totally out of the loop.

This is important because I imagine it was a thought for producers, who are banking on Taylor bringing with her the audience that they haven’t managed to capture yet. And with Bachelorette having been on air for over 20 years now, chances are, there is a huge appetite to bring in a younger, newer generation of viewers, the exact demographic that MomTok was able to target in their social media content, and the exact demographic Secret Lives of Mormon Wives was able to capture with the concept of their show. 

Audience numbers in the first season were beyond impressive. Last year when the first season premiered, Nielsen reported a 78% increase in viewership with 729,000,000 viewing minutes during the first week the show was on Hulu, landing it in sixth place overall and third place among originals, with women making up 77% of the audience. So by all measures, the strategy behind this casting choice is sound and has potential.

But as we know, that doesn’t mean this will work.

When it comes to why this might be a disastrous move, we’re already seeing the backlash of the network’s decision, with longstanding fans of the show enraged over the opportunity not going to someone they deem more worthy. 

There are also concerns over Taylor’s past political views which included her publicly expressing support for Trump as a reason she is not a good candidate for the show, or an indication that it's about to begin a slow descent into a dangerous direction. 

Then, there’s her family life. Taylor has three children. And though it’s not the first time a mother has been cast as the Bachelorette, it is the first time a woman with three kids by two men has been cast. When Emily Maynard, who had a six-year-old daughter, was cast, she famously kicked a contestant to the curb for referring to her daughter as “baggage”. All of this begs the question of what position we’re putting Taylor’s children in. 

There have long been concerns that the show is no longer about people with a vested interest in getting married, and that people come on the show for clout and further casting opportunities instead. And that tracks, considering so many people who don’t get paired up end up with spots, sometimes recurring, on spinoff shows like Bachelor in Paradise. That, coupled with the fact that Taylor is already knee deep into motherhood, could mean that the men who come on this show won’t be in it for the long haul as it pertains to being a husband and stepdad. 

For my last act, as I often do, I’d like to bring the racial component in and just hypothesize how we all think this would go over if a Black mother of three children, with two baby daddies and a past swinging scandal, had been brought onto the show. Does anyone want to imagine the uproar? 

As a reminder, we only got the first Black Bachelorette, Rachel Lindsay, in 2017. And the hoopla surrounding a conversation between her and show host Chris Harrison and racially insensitive remarks he made during the racial uprising of 2020 is what led to him being cut from his role as host, which he had been holding down since the show’s inception. Since Rachel, there have only been three other Black Bachelorettes and two Black Bachelors, despite the show being on air since 2002. 

As a former TV producer, I think this decision was genius. But as a mother, as an audience member and as a Black woman, I think it’s a bit far-fetched. But the entire franchise is far-fetched. It’s rooted in fantasy, fireworks and blissful ignorance about whether it might really work outside the bubble of carefully curated production. And so long as audience members are watching with that in mind, this just might be the most enjoyable season there is.