LOS ANGELES (AP) — ABC has scrubbed the upcoming season of “The Bachelorette,” starring Taylor Frankie Paul, citing a newly released video from 2023.
Thursday’s unprecedented cancellation of the already filmed season of the long-running reality television show comes days before it was to premiere, on Sunday.
“In light of the newly released video just surfaced today, we have made the decision to not move forward with the new season of ‘The Bachelorette’ at this time, and our focus is on supporting the family,” a statement from Disney Entertainment Television said.
The statement appeared to reference a 2023 video of an altercation between Paul and Dakota Mortensen that was published by TMZ on Thursday. Paul was arrested in 2023 and charged with aggravated assault and other offenses, including domestic violence in the presence of a child. She pleaded guilty that August to a misdemeanor charge of aggravated assault; the other charges were dismissed.
A police spokesperson in Draper City, Utah, told People magazine that there was an open domestic violence investigation of Paul and her ex-partner Mortensen, and that allegations have been made in both directions. Mortensen is the father of one of Paul’s three children.
Representatives for Paul and Mortensen didn’t immediately return requests for comment. ABC’s statement didn’t include details on what the network planned to do with the show’s time slot.
Paul, who was promoting Season 22 as recently as Wednesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America” and on the red carpet before Sunday’s Oscars telecast, was an unusual choice to helm “The Bachelorette.” Unlike previous leads, the 31-year-old had not appeared on the “Bachelor” franchise before — a departure from the typical practice of casting runners-up from previous seasons.
Her selection did offer synergy, though, as she also stars on “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” a Hulu reality show. Both Hulu and ABC are owned by Disney. In a statement confirming her casting in October, ABC credited Paul with “igniting ‘MomTok’ and going viral for pulling back the curtain on Salt Lake’s soft-swinging scene.”
Paul became known as an influencer in the #MomTok community, a group of women from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sharing their lives on TikTok. She made news when she announced, in 2022, that she had “stepped out” of an agreement with her husband in terms of relationships with other couples and they were getting divorced.
“The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” premiered in 2024. While Season 4 released last week, filming on Season 5 had already paused over the investigation.
“It was a decision that all of us girls came up with,” Paul’s co-star Mikayla Matthews said Wednesday on Instagram in response to a fan question about the production freeze. “We didn’t feel comfortable filming with everything that was happening.”
Paul posted on Instagram in December that filming had wrapped on “The Bachelorette,” which is hosted by Jesse Palmer.
Casting Paul was essentially an experiment gone wrong by Disney, said Kate Casey, a former crisis communications specialist who covers unscripted television on her podcast “Reality Life with Kate Casey.”
“I think they were trying to shake things up, and it makes sense because the ecosystem is saturated with dating shows like ‘F-Boy Island’ and ‘Love Island’ that push the boundaries and ‘The Bachelor’ and ‘The Bachelorette’ historically have been saccharine,” said Casey, who’s recorded more than 1,500 episodes of her podcast.
Casey says network executives probably believed casting Paul would tap into not only “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” viewership but her 6.1 million-strong TikTok following.
“The thinking was probably, ‘We’re going to get a new audience’ and the new audience is really the most coveted in all of entertainment,” she said.
Rancilio reported from Detroit.
