I often feel like a reality-show Grinch but I’m missing the gene which would have enabled me to enjoy shows like Real Housewives or The Bachelor/ette. Like, I’ve genuinely tried to watch some of those shows and I just find it all so fake and contrived, and never in a fun, camp way. Particularly for The Bachelor and Bachelorette franchises, it often feels like they’re pulling contestants from the dregs of society just as long as they have a good body and pleasantly forgettable face. Well, the latest Bachelorette isn’t even attractive, inside or out. The new season of the Bachelorette was supposed to premiere this coming Sunday. For days/weeks, there’s been a growing controversy over this season’s bachelorette, Taylor Frankie Paul. She’s already a “reality star” for one – she was part of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, and yes, she’s a Mormon divorcee whose marriage ended because she and her husband were swingers. After her divorce, she dated a man named Dakota Mortensen. In 2023, she was arrested and charged for domestic violence on Mortensen. ABC knew about the arrest and charges, by the way, and they still hired her. Well, on Thursday, Mortensen’s video of Taylor physically attacking him was released. Within hours, ABC yanked the new season of The Bachelorette.
An upcoming season of “The Bachelorette” was pulled on Thursday, a spokesperson for Disney said, after a video of its star attacking the father of one of her children was leaked.
Taylor Frankie Paul, a reality star who was about to star in a season of the show set to premiere on Sunday, has been under scrutiny in recent days after it emerged that she was facing a domestic violence investigation, years after pleading guilty to aggravated assault in a separate encounter.
Disney’s ABC, which broadcasts “The Bachelorette,” had appeared to be committed to continuing its plans to air the show. But on Thursday, TMZ published leaked footage of a physical altercation from 2023 in which Ms. Paul is shown putting her partner in a headlock and throwing metal chairs at him.
“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,” the Disney spokesperson said in a statement, “and our focus is on supporting the family.”
The police in Draper, Utah, have confirmed that there is an ongoing domestic violence investigation related to Ms. Paul and the man seen in the video, Dakota Mortensen, who is now her ex-boyfriend.
ABC was aware of the domestic violence charge from 2023 when it cast Ms. Paul. She rose to television fame on the reality series “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” and its first episode included police body camera footage of that arrest. Producers of “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” have faced past criticism for failing to properly vet contestants, but this is the most significant fallout in the franchise’s history.
Just FYI, this is not a failure to “properly vet” a contestant on one of ABC’s biggest franchises. This is ABC making a conscious decision to court controversy with a complete f–king trainwreck as their “star” bachelorette. They were playing Russian roulette with one of their most popular shows, and now ABC will likely lose “millions of dollars, from license fees to Warner Bros. Unscripted TV, to marketing dollars, ad sales and ‘trade outs,’” per People Mag. The Bachelorette costs $2 million per episode, and it’s one of ABC’s most attractive shows for advertisers. All of that money down the drain because ABC knowingly cast someone facing domestic violence charges. Beyond the DV charges, I’m actually really shocked that they would place their big franchise on this woman’s shoulders given her distasteful backstory. The “soft swinging” part would have surely been a massive turnoff for the older and more conservative ABC viewer base (not to mention those advertisers).
Anyway, after ABC canceled this season, Taylor’s spokesperson released a statement, saying in part: “Taylor is very grateful for ABC’s support as she prioritizes her family’s safety and security. After years of silently suffering extensive mental and physical abuse as well as threats of retaliation, Taylor is finally gaining the strength to face her accuser and taking steps to ensure that she and her children are protected from any further harm. There are too many women who are suffering in silence as they survive aggressive, jealous ex-partners who refuse to let them move on with their lives. Taylor has remained silent out of fear of further abuse, retaliation and public shaming.” I think it’s likely that there was abuse on both sides of the relationship, but to be clear, the reason why The Bachelorette is being canceled is because of her ex’s video of Taylor assaulting HIM.
Again, while ABC likely had not seen this video, they did know about her charges. The video just drives home the f–ked up way ABC was prepared to detonate a bomb under this Bachelorette season though. Some people within ABC are going to get fired (hopefully). And Disney’s CEO Bob Iger just stepped down this week as well. Y’all know it’s chaos over there.
🚨 EXCLUSIVE: Taylor Frankie Paul repeatedly attacked Dakota Mortensen during the 2023 incident in which she pled guilty to aggravated assault; video shows that one of her children was struck during the fight.
Trigger Warning. https://t.co/77CKYpLxvn pic.twitter.com/avr49EacY3
— TMZ (@TMZ) March 19, 2026
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
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- Los Angeles season 2 premiere of ‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ at Paramount Pictures Studio Featuring: Taylor Frankie Paul Where: Los Angeles, California, United States When: 09 May 2025 Credit: Faye’s Vision/Cover Images
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- Los Angeles season 2 premiere of ‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ at Paramount Pictures Studio Featuring: Taylor Frankie Paul Where: Los Angeles, California, United States When: 09 May 2025 Credit: Faye’s Vision/Cover Images
This story is all over TMZ (maybe 8 stories in a row) and I’m proud to say I don’t know about it and won’t read about it as a matter of principle (yeah, I know the bar is low).
Scared for their young children. And angered that TV producers and ‘fans’ support a toxic violent relationship. I read that she has 6 million fans on social media??
All this information was around when she was cast. I had seen the body cam on YouTube from when she threw the chair at him while drunk and hit their toddler instead. ABC needs to vet their people better. All reality tv does.
There is no need to vet anything. What there is a need for is to pull the plug on all these so called reality tv shows. Discovery and TLC knew for 20 years how problematic the Duggars were and said nothing. You want to know how fictional real estate developer (Trump) got elected president? Because of people tuning into this slop. The Kardashians would be nowhere today and the world would be a better place without all this garbage on TV.
At Eurogril70 –AMEN and AMEN!!!!
@eurogirl – 💯
@Eurogirl 🎯
Amen!!
@Eurogirl AMEN!
Kaiser, you hit the nail on the head with this one. Nothing attractive about her, and they couldn’t find anyone else why?
Wow I have no clue who these people are but seeing that video is triggering and hopefully the child(ren) are going to be protected and removed from her..
That video is so upsetting, I can’t really engage with this in terms of the Bachelorette or whatever- as you say, I really hope her children are removed from her care. WTF
Poor kids. ABC knew what they were getting when they signed her.
It’s time to cancel the whole Bachelor franchise. If ABC were smart they’d re-air Trista’s season and then cancel it for good. At least that way they go out on a high note. Folks can remember what the show used to be before the age of social media and influencers. There was a time when people actually did this show with good intentions and were trying to find a spouse. Not anymore.
Trista and Ryan will be married 23 years this year! That’s crazy.
A DIVORCED MOTHER with three children, a history of violence, and a swinger. What could possibly go wrong? That doesn’t sound like a “bachelorette”, does it? (I don’t watch the SLMW show, and haven’t watched the Bachelorette in eons), but it’s time to can this show. It’s a train wreck, even on a good day. And can someone tell me, what’s the appeal of her? Does she dazzle when she is on camera or something?
MTE!! This doesn’t even make sense as a premise. She’s not a bachelorette for one thing. There’s nothing wrong with being a divorced mother and being a swinger is someone’s private business, but put all that in the mix with having already been the subject of a reality tv scandal involving swinging, the bachelors would clearly only be in it for the freak show.
And that’s all without knowing about the DV.
Um why is ‘DIVORCED MOTHER’ first and in capitals?! A bachelorette is simply a single, unmarried woman, which also applies to a divorced woman whether they have kids or not. Also, swinging is no-one’s business. The violent a-hole part is the only thing that should have stuck here.
I didn’t realize drinking and swinging was a Mormon thing. I envisioned more of an Osmonds vibe.
Whatever you’re preached not to do is gonna be a down low thing.
All religions have followers with varying degrees of piety.
They picked her cause one of the producers liked the squished up melon look.
I just heard on the radio that ABC is set to lose $100 million. Maybe stop this ancient prostitution reality show.
I didn’t know about the arrest and abuse issue since I didn’t follow the Mormon show scandal but why would ABC risk it? Casting scandal is one thing but violence should be a no go.
These shows are always looking to skirt the line between juicy scandal and scandals that cancel the show so my guess is that they thought it was worth the risk. I’ve never seen the appeal of any of these shows. There is nothing original or fun or interesting about bringing a ton of fake people together to see how much additional fake outrage they can manufacture. It’s disgusting that this is what is offered as entertainment and disgusting that there is an audience for this stuff.
The minute she was announced as The Bachelorette, I knew it was going to be a train wreck. Even before the domestic violence video came out, there were stories that she had slept with Dakota before she left to film the show and almost pulled out. And then stories came out that they had hooked up after she came back from filming, totally blowing the whole ‘Taylor Frankie Paul finds true love on The Bachelorette’ storyline. But the fact that ABC knew about the domestic violence and still cast her is beyond the pale.
I watch secret lives of Mormon wives due to my interest in Mormon culture and did enjoy it but this last season was a train wreck and Taylor was melting down. She said yes to the bachelorette offer to get away from cycling with Dakota. But then the night before she was to leave for the bachelorette he slept over! She admitted it right on camera they had sex. That right there was public knowledge so why would they continue to film her in the first place knowing she did that? How unfair to the guys putting themselves out there to be picked by her. Of course the DV was from 2023 so they knew about that too.
The video is horrific, especially given the presence of the young child. But, apparently, ABC was fine with domestic violence as long as there was no video. That’s horrific too. Kudos to him for continuing to record while he’s being assaulted.
How can someone be a fan of this low-class show? Even w/o the DV angle, she is not smart or attractive.
I’ve never seen it, but it seems to fit the dictionary definition of ‘pandering’. 🤷♀️
There’s no evidence (yet) that there is domestic violence on both sides. The video is harrowing and most damaging to her is that she throws the chair at her ex and hits her daughter with it in the process. Her daughter immediately starts crying after she’s hit and her ex keeps imploring Taylor to help her daughter as she continues to scream at him and say it’s his fault she hit her daughter with a chair. By the way the kid was only 5.
Her statement is delusional and sort of insane in light of the evidence.
Her eyes look violent even. And she needs a refund on that awful boob job.
The first time I heard of The Bachelor, and saw a brief part of one where this man was pretty much having his way with the women while they literally debased themselves to get his attention, then his giving one of them a rose and never to the one with whom he’d gone furthest, I mentally categorised it as “licenced prostitution” for public consumption. And it appeared to be pretty popular with people who would normally be clutching their pearls and denouncing prostitution. I am astonished it lasted this long. And was even more astonished when they came up with The Bachelorette. Never had a taste for these shows (including Big Brother, Love Island, etc.), so it’s not just you Kaiser, not by a long shot.
I just hate reality tv. It has contributed to the dumbing down of our country and most of it is mind-numbing stupidity. This woman is a mess and if she wasn’t a privileged white woman, she would have wound up in jail over that incident. Also. I hadn’t realized Iger was finally out at Disney. ❤️ About f@#$ing time. I canceled Disney+/Hulu after Kimmel was censored, but these terrible, incompetent executives being paid hundreds/ thousands of times what rank in file employees earn destroyed the greatest middle class the world had ever known as they gleefully destroy companies with cheapskate decisions to line their own pockets.
Disney was weak but also hamstrung by its Sinclair assets with Kimmel. Paramount/cbs is actively promoting fascism but there’s so much less boycott energy. Maybe if they’d gotten the Disney treatment when they canceled Colbert and hired bari Weiss they’d not be buying Warner brothers now.
I fail to understand the interest in a show where men and women parade themselves like cattle in front of a buyer. It’s gross. I can admit to watching one season because I’m friends with an ex bachelorette. I dipped out as soon as she was left. I know she did it for visibility, not a love match, but the premise is “ick”.
Even with ample warning, I wasn’t expecting the video to be THAT bad. Wow. Wow wow wow.
@Kaiser, I, too, am a Reality show Grinch. I do NOT understand the appeal of these vapid generically attractive people who are willing to act the fool on TV…and for what? Some basement level celebrity? I truly cannot…
Why watch “unscripted” (it’s not) “reality” (it’s not) tv when the longest running reality show is right there in Windsor?!
But her breakup was not because of swinging. Tons of people do that successfully and you just never hear about it.
It was because she is unstable and violent. Everyone involved seems unhinged. People need to learn conflict resolution, de escalation, and how to disagree and remain calm.
It’s not exclusive to romantic relationships. Some people just don’t fight fair.
I used to watch the Bachelor/Bachelorette shows, but I have not in years. I heard they cast Taylor Frankie Paul last fall and did not know who she was. A simple Google search told me all I needed to know about her past DV arrest/charges. ABC deserves all the backlash they are getting for casting this trainwreck of a woman. The whole franchise should be cancelled. Period.
Like others a few here, I used to watch this show back in the day. Those early seasons were actually enjoyable. But it went downhill after a few seasons. Hopefully, this news will put a stake through its heart.
That’s grotesque. I hope it costs Disney way more than that.
For the life of me I’ll never understand how people can watch this sh!t.
That video is horrifying to watch. I remember the wave of celebreality shows in the early 2000s and LOVED them (Rock of Love, Daisy of Love, etc) and they all came to an end because a contestant on Megan Wants a Millionaire and I Love Money 3 killed his wife. Those shows were never released (but you can find snippets online). Hopefully this is the end for The Bachelor/ette shows.