Taylor Frankie Paul's canceled season exposes 'Bachelorette' inflexibility

Taylor Frankie Paul was set to be the twenty-second Bachelorette, a casting choice that promised to shake up a franchise whose ratings have slipped since the late 2010s. ABC pulled the plug on the season amid a police investigation into an alleged February domestic violence incident involving Paul and her ex, Dakota Mortensen, and after a disturbing video from a 2023 altercation surfaced.

Paul rose to prominence on TikTok and Hulu’s The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, where a 2022 video about “soft swinging” helped launch the show. Production paused in 2023 when Paul was arrested and charged with aggravated assault, child abuse, and domestic violence in the presence of a child; she pleaded guilty to aggravated assault in exchange for the other charges being dropped and entered a 36-month plea of abeyance.

The series showed police bodycam footage of that arrest and later followed the couple through a pregnancy; their child, Ever True, was born in March 2024.

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