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The Bachelorette's messy break-up with its unlikely star Taylor Frankie Paul
TikTok star Taylor Frankie Paul sat uneasily in her chair during a live interview on ABC's Good Morning America this week, caught between trying to promote her turn in the network's new series of The Bachelorette and addressing fresh domestic violence allegations lodged against her by her ex-boyfriend.
"I'm a person that will always speak my truth. That's what I'm known for. So when the time is right, I will be," the 31-year-old star of Hulu's Secret Lives of Mormon Wives (SLOMW) said.
At the time, ABC was still poised to proceed with the premiere of its flagship dating series on Sunday.
The network had been heavily promoting the show for months, even sending Paul to the Oscars the previous weekend, with the hope that the social media star would revitalise an ageing tentpole franchise.
But those hopes soon turned into regrets, as ABC pulled the plug on Season 22 of The Bachelorette three days before its premiere - a first in The Bachelor franchise's 24-year history.
The decision came after 2023 footage of Paul was released online which appeared to show her attacking her ex-boyfriend with her daughter present.
"In light of the newly released video just surfaced today, we have made the decision to not move forward with the new season of The Bachelorette at this time, and our focus is on supporting the family," a spokesperson for Disney Entertainment Television said.
The sudden about-face raises embarrassing questions for the broadcaster, not least about its judgment in hiring someone whose history of violence was known, and has thrown the future of one of television's most beloved franchises into doubt.
Soon after Disney pulled the plug, Paul and her ex-boyfriend, Dakota Mortensen, with whom she shares a son, released duelling statements with fresh allegations about their turbulent relationship. He was also granted temporary custody of their son, according to a court protective order.
Neither Paul or Mortensen responded to the BBC's requests for comment for this story.
Their fraught romance has been a key SLOMW plotline and made for uncomfortable reunions on their Hulu series, which lifts the veil on the scandals and tribulations of a group of mums from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, who also happened to be social media influencers.
Paul, a divorced mum-of-three, was a standout star among the women, and her "messy" reputation became part of her brand.
She earned national fame - or infamy - in 2022 when she announced that she and her husband Tate Paul were divorcing, and that they had been "soft-swinging" with other couples within their mostly Mormon circle.
That notoriety helped launch the hit show on Hulu and on Disney - which owns both ABC and Hulu. The network appeared to bank on that cross-promotion and corporate synergy by casting her as The Bachelorette to resuscitate its long-term decline in ratings.
"We are really curious to peel back the layers and see the secrets of messy lives. We don't want the sanitised version," said Jo Hemmings, who has worked with reality TV productions in the UK, including Big Brother, to vet potential contestants.
Paul, who has more than six million followers on TikTok and two million on Instagram, was supposed to breathe new life into ABC's Bachelorette, which has not aired since 2024 after weathering a series of PR nightmares in front of and behind the camera.
Its formula was simple: an all-American woman, usually a rejected contestant from The Bachelor, dates a slew of eligible men to hopefully find the one and bestow upon him a final rose, earning a marriage proposal.
Paul, the first contestant not to be plucked from the Bachelor Nation, broke that mould in many ways.
Many of the allegations that resurfaced this week were common knowledge , which has left some wondering why ABC chose to risk casting Paul.
In fact, SLOMW's debut episode in 2024 kicked off with separate footage of the 2023 domestic violence incident that torpedoed The Bachelorette this week.
One reality television insider, who asked not to be identified due to their ties to the involved parties, said the network was "willing to put all the chips in the middle of the table" because if it worked out well, The Bachelorette could have acquired an entirely new audience with a valuable new demographic.
Casting Paul "was an-all-or nothing Hail Mary to try and revive the dying franchise", the insider said.
But that bet did not pay off.
When previously unseen footage of the 2023 incident was leaked this week, the backlash was swift.
Bakery chain Cinnabon terminated its collaboration with The Bachelorette and SLOMW, citing recent developments and allegations surrounding Paul, who they said no longer aligned with the brand's values.
Paul's planned appearance on The Tonight Show was also scrapped.
"It was a bad casting decision, in my opinion, and it blew up in their face," the insider said.
The fallout can serve as a cautionary tale for the industry, experts who spoke to the BBC say.
There's a perpetual conflict between entertainment and responsibility in reality TV shows, because conflict drives the story, said Hemmings, author of Familiar Strangers: The Psychology of our Relationship with Fame in the Age of Visibility.
ABC as a broadcast network is held to higher standard than it's streaming partner Hulu due to oversight by the federal regulator and advertisers, who may be skittish when it comes to racy programming.
Her troubling history - a criminal conviction, alcohol use and mental health issues - was either neglected or ignored, and certainly didn't make her worth the risk to cast, said Hemmings.
"They just got it wrong," Hemmings said.
It has left many fans and media experts wondering how ABC could have dropped the ball.
"This is a very expensive blunder," said Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor and head of West Coast Trial Lawyers, who used to represent Disney.
He estimates that there will be an eight-figure fallout, and said while he expects the company to survive, it's "embarrassing and it is costly".
It's unclear whether The Bachelorette, which was already filmed, is simply being preempted for a period of time or if it will never see the light of day. Season five of SLOMW has also been put on pause.
But pulling out was "probably the right move" for the family-friendly Disney, which likely had "an out" in its contract to cover breaches of its morality clause, Rahmani said.
"This was a clear risk that they underestimated. She was either not properly vetted or vetted poorly, and these red flags were ignored," he added.
If you're asking me, there's absolutely no way I would cast someone who has... a felony hanging over her head, no matter how popular she is.
Disney has not responded to the BBC's request for comment.
"They're keeping what they do close to the vest right now," said Jeff Schneider, an entertainment attorney who is the executive director of the Center for Sports, Entertainment, Media & Technology Law at the University of Southern California.
He suspects Warner Bros Television - the studio that produces The Bachelorette - and ABC are already negotiating a new deal, as well as how to recoup any losses with advertisers.
Source: BBC
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