There’s a brand new Bachelorette on the town — and we’ve met her earlier than.
Taylor Frankie Paul, “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” star, would be the lead on Season 22 of “The Bachelorette.” She broke the information herself Wednesday on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast.
ABC confirmed the information in an announcement that touted Paul for “igniting ‘MomTok’ and going viral for pulling back the curtain on Salt Lake’s soft-swinging scene.” Paul will return to “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” for Season 3 in November, and the subsequent season of “The Bachelorette” will premiere in 2026.
“To be honest, surreal,” Paul mentioned when requested in regards to the information by “Call Her Daddy” host Alex Cooper. “It has not hit me right now in this moment. … I’m like, how is this happening? That’s my answer.”
Notably, Paul, 31, has not appeared within the “Bachelor” franchise earlier than, a change from the standard follow of casting contestants from earlier seasons of “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” as leads. However the choose affords some synergy, as “Bachelorette” broadcaster ABC and “Mormon Wives” streamer Hulu are each owned by Disney. (Two of her present castmates are headed to “Dancing With the Stars,” additionally on ABC.)
Requested by Cooper how the casting selection took place, Paul defined that she’d made a TikTok video on a lark a couple of years in the past, when her relationship “wasn’t working out.”
“I made a funny video,” she mentioned, with the message, “I’m single.”
“It was like a Lindsay Lohan TikTok,” she mentioned, nevertheless it someway caught individuals’s consideration. “I didn’t believe it until I got the invitation,” she mentioned.
Nonetheless, Paul mentioned, she was not instantly positive it could be manageable.
The mother-of-three mentioned she puzzled: “How do I make this work? I’m a co-parent, I have two baby daddies. … Can I travel that long? Can I be gone that long?”
After which she realized she may do it: “I was just like, I will make it work. If I want to, I can … I can ask for help.”
Paul turned often called an influencer in the #MomTok neighborhood, a bunch of ladies from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sharing their lives on TikTok. She made information when she introduced, in 2022, that she had “stepped out” of an settlement together with her husband when it comes to relationships with different {couples} involving “soft-swinging” (a type of partner-swapping,) and so they have been getting divorced.
The next yr, Paul was arrested and charged with aggravated assault and different offenses, together with home violence within the presence of a kid, throughout a dispute with a boyfriend. She pleaded responsible in August 2023 to a misdemeanor cost of aggravated assault; the opposite prices have been dismissed.
Paul advised Cooper she didn’t know what it could be like relationship a number of individuals at a time. She mentioned she had requested some males, “How do people do it? … I’ve had flings, but this is different.”
Requested what her greatest adjustment could be, she replied: “All of it.”
