Taylor Frankie Paul was announced as the Bachelorette for season 22 on 10 September 2025 on the Call Her Daddy podcast. Her season premieres 22 March 2026. In between, Mormon Wives kept filming, her relationship with Dakota Mortensen stayed in the headlines, and ABC broke a 22-year tradition by choosing a lead who had never appeared on The Bachelor. The timeline is messy. Here is how the pieces line up so readers can judge the narrative for themselves.
The Mormon Wives and Bachelorette timelines overlap in a way that rewards narrative over clarity
According to Marie Claire and Yahoo Entertainment, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives season 1 premiered on Hulu on 6 September 2024; season 2 on 15 May 2025; season 3 on 13 November 2025; and season 4 on 12 March 2026. Taylor Frankie Paul is a central figure on the show. Wikipedia and production reporting indicate that Mormon Wives season 4 was filmed in fall 2025, with storylines covering Paul’s departure to film The Bachelorette. So while viewers were watching earlier seasons, Paul was already cast as the Bachelorette (announced 10 September 2025) and production for Bachelorette season 22 ran from 26 October 2025 in Agoura Hills through December 2025 in Saint Lucia, as reported by Elite Daily and Wikipedia. The Mormon Wives season 4 finale, which aired 12 March 2026, featured a cliffhanger tied to her transition to the Bachelor franchise. The two shows are deliberately braided: Mormon Wives documents the lead-up to and fallout from her move to ABC.
Paul’s personal timeline complicates the picture. In February 2023 she was arrested in Utah on domestic violence charges after an altercation with Dakota Mortensen; according to Cheatsheet and PRIMETIMER, police reported she threw barstools and chairs and one struck her five-year-old daughter. She pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and was placed on probation. She divorced Tate Paul in June 2022 amid a public “soft swinging” scandal she later called traumatic. She continued a complicated relationship with Mortensen after the arrest. When she was announced as the Bachelorette in September 2025, she said on Call Her Daddy that she wanted to get “outside of Utah and the toxicity that I’m in.” So the official narrative—single mom from Mormon Wives seeks love on The Bachelorette—sits alongside a documented arrest, a messy relationship with Mortensen, and fan backlash. Marie Claire’s framing was explicitly about lining up those timelines so readers could see the sequence.
Reality TV World and CarterMatt reported that Paul addressed the casting backlash by asking viewers to give her a chance and to look beyond headlines. She told The Hollywood Reporter that if people only knew her from news stories, “maybe they aren’t the prettiest ones” and that hearing her story might change perceptions. PRIMETIMER noted that she spoke to Bachelorette contestants directly about her past and described her situation with Mortensen as part of a difficult cycle. The timeline that matters for judging the narrative is therefore: Mormon Wives S1–S4 air dates and filming windows; the September 2025 Bachelorette announcement; the October–December 2025 Bachelorette shoot; the March 2026 Mormon Wives S4 finale and March 2026 Bachelorette premiere. Within that, the arrest (2023), divorce (2022), and ongoing Mortensen dynamic are the backdrop the show and the press both reference.
ABC broke franchise tradition by choosing a lead who had never appeared on The Bachelor. According to Red94 and Artthreat, Paul is the first Bachelorette in 22 years to come from outside Bachelor Nation. The cast of 22 men was announced on 23 February 2026; the season was filmed in Agoura Hills, Steamboat Springs, Las Vegas, Miami, and Saint Lucia. A special with 18 former Bachelorette leads advising Paul aired 15 March 2026. So from announcement to premiere, the timeline is tight, and Mormon Wives season 4 deliberately runs right up to the Bachelorette launch.
What This Actually Means
Readers can now see how the official story (Mormon Wives star becomes historic first non-Bachelor Bachelorette) lines up with the messy calendar: overlapping filming, a recent toxic relationship, and controversy that ABC and Paul have addressed head-on. Whether the timeline is “right” or “wrong” is for each reader to decide; the point of laying it out is to make the gap between the official narrative and the facts visible.
Who is Taylor Frankie Paul?
Taylor Frankie Paul is a Utah-based reality TV star and TikTok influencer (MomTok) who became famous on Hulu’s The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. She is a single mother of three. She divorced Tate Paul in 2022 and was arrested in 2023 in connection with an altercation with then-boyfriend Dakota Mortensen; she pleaded guilty to aggravated assault. In September 2025 she was announced as the Bachelorette for season 22, the first lead in the show’s history not to have appeared on The Bachelor. Season 22 premieres 22 March 2026 on ABC.
Sources
Marie Claire, Yahoo Entertainment, Wikipedia (The Bachelorette season 22), PRIMETIMER, Cheatsheet, The Hollywood Reporter