Taylor Frankie Paul's Bachelorette Cancellation Was Inevitable
ICYMI
Slate Podcasts
3.9 • 800 Ratings
🗓️ 28 March 2026
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by New York Magazine features writer Rebecca Jennings, who recently profiled the now-cancelled Bachelorette, Taylor Frankie Paul. Paul’s season was pulled after a video of her 2023 domestic violence incident was published by TMZ, following news of another domestic violence investigation from February of this year. While the video is upsetting, knowledge of Pauls’ 2023 arrest is not new, and The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives continued to use her volatile relationship for ratings. Now, parent company Disney is turning on her over a situation that may be more complicated than it seems.
This podcast is produced by Vic Whitley-Berry, Daisy Rosario, and Kate Lindsay.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, I'm Kate Lindsay, and you're listening to I-C-Y-M-I, or in case you missed it, |
| 0:18.9 | Blate's podcast about internet culture. |
| 0:23.2 | And today, we are joined by Rebecca Jennings. Welcome back, Rebecca. Yay, thanks for having me. Rebecca, you know her. She's a |
| 0:29.2 | features writer at New York Magazine who recently profiled, quote, the messiest woman on television, |
| 0:34.6 | which is in reference to Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star Taylor |
| 0:38.9 | Frankie Paul. It was published just one day after footage of the 2023 domestic violence |
| 0:44.9 | incident between Paul and her on-again, off-again, boyfriend Dakota Mortensen, was published by |
| 0:50.1 | TMZ. That is what this whole episode is going to be about. But Rebecca, before we get into this issue, I want to hear about how you had to handle that behind the scenes because I know, based on timing, that cannot be what this profile was initially supposed to be about. |
| 1:05.0 | No, what are you talking about? I wrote that in five minutes and then we published it immediately. |
| 1:08.0 | It went right to the printers. |
| 1:17.0 | So obviously, this has been in the works for months. |
| 1:21.4 | I visited the set of The Bachelor at November, and my original pitch for this was, |
| 1:24.1 | why is ABC making this decision? |
| 1:29.4 | Taylor Frankie Paul is sort of the opposite of the stereotypical bachelor contestant. |
| 1:34.9 | She has three children from two different fathers. She has a previous domestic violence charge. |
| 1:40.3 | She is, you know, famously Mormon, which is like sort of like, in theory, could sort of narrow her options. But she's also kind of known for being really messy. And most of all, she's a |
| 1:45.9 | professional influencer. And for the, on The Bachelor, that is something that they really try to |
| 1:51.6 | avoid. Not that successfully. But, you know, over 20 years, that show has sort of thought of |
| 1:59.2 | itself as casting these relatable, every women type |
| 2:03.2 | people that are like dental hygienists and call themselves like daddy's girls and like that |
| 2:07.7 | like down home, middle America stuff. Taylor Frankie Paul is not that at all. And so that was the |
| 2:12.2 | original pitch for the profile, but obviously in the last week and especially the last day before it went up, it radically changed in tone. |
... |
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