Cancelled Bachelorette Is No Longer a Mormon

Taylor Frankie Paul is stepping away from the Mormon Church. The TikTok personality and reality TV star who would have been the next Bachelorette but for the airing of footage from a 2023 domestic violence incident, chose Easter Sunday to announce that she is "detaching" from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, despite being born and raised in it. "The last 40 days felt like hell on earth," she wrote on Instagram, per Variety, framing the move as part of a search for broader understanding. She said she continues to believe strongly in "Christ, God, the bible, the divine," but described a sense that "there is more out there to learn."

Her public shift in faith follows scrutiny tied to a 2023 incident in which she pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, as featured on the first season of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Though the incident was previously known, TMZ recently released video showing Paul repeatedly striking then-partner Dakota Mortensen; a police report said one of her children, then 5, was accidentally hit and suffered a head injury during the altercation. Filming of Mormon Wives has been paused, with uncertainty around whether Paul will continue with the show, per Star. In her post, Paul said she would feel no less of God's love in leaving the church, since she believes people are loved no matter where they pray, even "on a bathroom floor at home," per TMZ.