Taylor Frankie Paul biography searches have spiked again this week after her ex-partner Dakota Mortensen filed a defamation lawsuit against Hulu, reigniting interest in one of reality television's most chaotic multi-year storylines.
Early Life and the Move to Utah
Taylor Paul was born Taylor Frankie Wilkinson on May 23, 1994, in Pueblo, Colorado. She moved to Utah with her mother and stepfather at age 16, and during that period she joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the connection that would later give her reality television persona its name, according to Wikipedia's sourced timeline.
Marriage, Divorce, and the Viral Soft-Swinging Confession
Paul married Tate Paul in 2016 and the couple had two children together. Their marriage ended in early 2022 after Tate divorced her when she broke the rules of what the couple described as a soft-swinging arrangement and fell for one of their swinging partners. The divorce triggered a depressive episode that Paul has spoken about publicly, including significant weight loss she attributed to that period. Around the same time, she went viral for openly discussing the soft-swinging dynamic among Mormon couples in her social circle, a revelation that eventually became the premise for an entire television series.
How The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives Made Her a Breakout Star
Hulu launched The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives in 2024, built directly around Paul's soft-swinging story and her subsequent 2023 arrest for aggravated assault connected to an incident with Dakota Mortensen, the man she began dating in August 2022 and with whom she later had a third child, a son, in 2024. Critics quickly named her the breakout star of season one. Collider's Hansika Khokhar wrote that she "turned what could've been a short-lived TikTok infamy into long-form storytelling gold," and by June 2025 Paul had landed on Time Magazine's list of the Top 100 Creators of the year.
The Bachelorette Casting and Its Sudden Cancellation
In a twist that surprised even longtime reality television watchers, Paul was announced as the Bachelorette for the show's 22nd season in 2026 and had already completed filming. ABC canceled the season before it aired after TMZ released footage showing Paul throwing chairs during a 2023 domestic violence incident with Mortensen, footage that reportedly showed one chair accidentally striking her daughter. The cancellation exposed a pattern: Paul had been investigated by law enforcement at least three separate times for domestic violence allegations between 2023 and 2024.
A Year of Courtroom Drama With Dakota Mortensen
The fallout continued through most of 2026. A new domestic violence incident in February led to a fresh police investigation, and while prosecutors ultimately declined to press charges, a judge granted Mortensen temporary sole custody of their son. That order was later modified in April to give Paul up to eight hours of supervised visitation per week. On April 30, 2026, a judge ordered both Paul and Mortensen to stay 100 feet apart for three years after reviewing eleven separate fights between the pair, and it was revealed during that period that Paul had experienced several miscarriages she believes influenced her behavior in the relationship.
The mandatory supervision order against Paul was lifted on June 1, 2026, and she briefly returned to Mormon Wives in a limited capacity that July. Her legal situation kept evolving: her criminal probation was reduced from a felony to a Class A misdemeanor in August, and that same month she was granted a continued stalking injunction against Cru Eaton, a friend of Mortensen's. By September, reports surfaced that she had allegedly failed multiple drug tests, resulting in further reduced parenting time, and she ultimately announced her permanent departure from The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives later that month.
Why Her Story Is Trending Again Right Now
Paul's name resurfaced this November after Mortensen filed a defamation lawsuit against Hulu and the show's production companies, alleging that seasons three through five staged scenes and selectively edited footage to paint him unfairly as the aggressor in their relationship. The lawsuit does not name Paul directly, but given how intertwined their storylines have been for three seasons, renewed interest in the legal filing has driven fresh searches for her full biography and timeline.
For continuing coverage of this story, see our related piece on the Dakota Mortensen Hulu lawsuit and browse our Entertainment News hub.
Sources
Biographical and legal timeline details sourced from Wikipedia, cross-referenced against reporting from Deadline, Variety, People, and TMZ cited therein.
