MomTok certainly brought the drama to its Hulu series, and things didn’t calm down once filming wrapped. Since the premiere of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, fans have flooded social media to find out what happened to their favorite MomTokers since filming for the show wrapped.
Is Taylor Frankie Paul still with Dakota Mortensen? Is Jen Affleck going to divorce Ben Affleck’s possible second cousin?! Is the group still on the outs with Whitney Leavitt?!? Did MomTok survive its reality show?!?!
Keep reading to discover the answers to all of those questions and find out where the ‘Mormon Wives’ stars are now!
Taylor Frankie Paul
Taylor was, without a doubt, the center of the drama throughout the whole season. The pilot episode included Taylor exposing the swinging scandal, having a miscarriage, getting pregnant by her boyfriend Dakota Mortensen, and getting arrested for domestic violence…all in one episode.
Throughout Season 1, Taylor and Dakota’s tumultuous relationship remained at the forefront. When the show premiered, things between the couple seemed to be on a better track. However, Taylor worried fans when she posted a TikTok about her “slowly morphing” into her 2022 self. (That’s the year of the swinging scandal and her divorce.)
Then, she said on TikTok that it was “too triggering” to watch ‘Mormon Wives.’
@taylorfrankiepaul If we get season two maybe I’ll be able to watch. #secretlivesofmormonwives #birth #momtok #postpartum ♬ Work Song – Other Voices Series 19 – Hozier
On Tuesday, Us Weekly confirmed that Taylor and Dakota— who welcomed son Ever in March— are taking a break from their relationship.
“I would say we’re working on things, and I actually have no idea where it goes with us from here,” Taylor told the magazine. “We are not fully together, but not fully done. I don’t know what the future holds with him and I.”
Taylor also told the magazine that Dakota was unhappy with how he was portrayed on ‘Mormon Wives.’
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“He has a really good soft side, and I feel like that wasn’t shown on the show,” she said. “He’s like, ‘I look like this a** to you while you’re pregnant, when that’s just not the case of how I treated you the whole time. Yes, I did defend myself in [some] cases, but that’s not how I am to you. I look like this awful person when I’m not.’”
In the new cover story for Us Weekly, Taylor says she doesn’t have any regrets about exposing the friend group’s soft-swinging back in 2022; however, she has no plans to ever return to the lifestyle.
“I didn’t feel bad at the time,” she told the magazine, “but learning the after-effects of how it can destroy your life, I absolutely don’t miss that.”
Jen Affleck
Jen and her husband, Zac Affleck, made headlines for their seemingly volatile relationship on the show. Zac threatened divorce after Jen was unknowingly taken to a Chippendales show in Las Vegas– even though she left before the sexy-time male revue started. The couple also bickered over their future, with Jen wanting to stay in Utah and continue to be part of MomTok, and Zac wanting to pack their family up and move to New York so he could attend medical school.
After the show, the couple moved to the Big Apple and committed to staying married.
“We were just kids when we got married. Young, naive, and inexperienced, we truly had no idea what we were getting ourselves into,” Jen wrote on Instagram last week. “… We didn’t always see eye-to-eye, and a lot of times, we still don’t. But that’s what marriage is, we keep trying. I truly believe there were lessons we both needed to teach each other.”
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While Jen admitted to her husband’s “flaws” and said there were “of course” times she and Zac wanted to walk away from their marriage, she insisted, “There’s so much more to our marriage and what we offer to each other than people realize.”
Then there’s the Ben Affleck of it all. Ahead of the show’s premiere, Jen got people talking when she said that Zac is the second cousin of the famous actor. That assertion has been challenged in recent weeks, though.
Business Insider correspondent Katie Notopoulos did a deep dive into the claim, tracing the family’s lineage back to Scotland in 1801. In her research, Katie discovered “no overlap or common ancestry between the two Affleck families.”
The Utah Afflecks—and the Boston Afflecks for that matter—have yet to speak out about the situation.
Demi Engemann
Demi’s biggest controversy surrounded her 16-year age gap with her husband, Bret Engemann, and their…um… unusual use for a bowl of Fruity Pebbles.
In an interview with Us Weekly published on Wednesday, Demi admitted that discussing the secret cereal-themed sex story on TV did cause some trouble in her marriage to Bret.
“There was a little bit of tension with my husband and I once it came out,” she said. “Now he’s like, ‘Is anybody saying anything?’ It’s become a funny, fun thing that we are totally just having fun with it.”
She acknowledged that, should the show get picked up for Season 2, she plans to keep her sex stories more-private. (She also refused to disclose more details about the Great Fruity Pebbles Caper; however, she insists that if people figure out what happened, she and Bret may discuss it publicly.)
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“My natural thing is I want to tell everyone. I want to share everything,” Demi told the magazine. “Sometimes you don’t know the boundaries being crossed until it’s crossed. That was a boundary that was definitely crossed, and I feel bad about it. But we’ve talked about it since. He’s like, ‘I know you’re just excited and that’s cute, but let’s keep those things between us.’”
All otherwise seems to be well with Demi and Bret since the show’s wrap. In fact, the couple recently ran into The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Lisa Barlow and her husband, John Barlow. The Barlows are longtime friends of Bret’s, as they knew him when he was married to RHOSLC guest star, Angie Harrington.
Whitney Leavitt
Whitney is no stranger to controversy. She previously went viral (for all the wrong reasons) after posting a dancing video while her and husband Conner Leavitt’s infant son was hospitalized with RSV. Then, at the start of ‘Mormon Wives,’ Whitney dropped the bombshell that Conner had been on Tinder the entirety of their marriage. Amid her family drama, Whitney tried to jockey for the head MomToker title, leading to problems with the women and her departure from the group.
Whitney, who’s currently expecting her third child, has fired back against her villain edit. In a TikTok, she wrote, “Huh, that’s not how I remember it.” She also addressed her future on the show, hinting that she’s uncertain she’ll return if ‘Mormon Wives’ gets picked up for another season.
During an interview with The Squeeze podcast released on Tuesday, Whitney stated that she has only watched ‘Mormon Wives’ season once, and that Conner “refuses” to watch the season because of “what it did to [her] emotionally.
“[The show] put me in a dark place,” Whitney told the podcast hosts.
Whitney also spoke out about being portrayed as “the villain” of the cast, pointing out that, thanks to the show’s editing, viewers didn’t always get to see the reasons behind some of the things Whitney did and said during Season 1.
“There were decisions that I made during that show that nobody asked me to do,” she explained. “Like, I willingly did that, but there was no context behind why I had made certain decisions. But again, that’s the game, I guess.”
Whitney added that a lot of the hate she’s received has come from people she viewed as friends (outside the MomTockers).
“It was more so from my other friends. It was that hate that was probably the hardest to see,” she said.
As for the status of her friendships and her MomTok status, Whitney seemed as unsure as the rest of us.
“I don’t really know, and I don’t really feel welcomed in, like, the whole group as a whole,” she told Distractify. “But again, like, some I’ve reconnected with, and just some I haven’t.”
During her interview with The Squeeze, Whitney stated that she remains close to Taylor and Mayci, and has “no ill feelings” towards the rest of the cast.
“I’m excited for more seasons to go on because there were a lot of personal stories that were cut out from the show that are very strong, and I know a lot of other people can relate to. I wish them the best,” she said.
Whitney and Conner are due to welcome their third child next month.
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Mikayla Matthews
Mikayla’s storyline largely had to do with her chronic illness, which she told Us Weekly she still hasn’t “found any answers about.”
“I’m a lot better than I was, but I still have my ups and downs, so it’s just frustrating to not get any answers and feel like I’m on my own and then have to navigate being in this really exciting time while not feeling my best,” she said. “And so that’s kind of been the trickiest.”
The illness was especially hard for Mikayla while she balanced filming and her and husband Jace Terry’s three kids.
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“That was a really hard time. I feel like my confidence was at an all-time low. I feel like just my quality of life wasn’t great because I could barely do anything,” she said. “I was filming during that time, and so I would go, I would be crying on the way to filming, being like, ‘Oh my gosh, I look so horrible.’ And then I would get there and just not be fully present.”
Mayci Neeley
Mayci wasn’t at the forefront of any major drama throughout the season, instead playing nice with most of the women. In the weeks since the show came out, Mayci traveled to New York with her husband, Jacob Neeley, and went on a major press tour.
She posted a quick recap of her life story on TikTok, sharing that the father of her first child died while she was 14 weeks pregnant with her son Hudson. (That pregnancy was out of wedlock—a big “no Neeley” for someone in the Mormon community.)
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She went on to marry Jacob and have a daughter with him. She is currently undergoing IVF in hopes of having a third child.
“I would love to tell more of my story in season 2. We filmed a little bit of it in season 1, but it all got cut,” she told Us Weekly in an interview on Wednesday. “So, I’m really hoping that people can see that.”
Jessi Ngatikaura
Jessi and her husband, Jordan Ngatikaura, also hung back from the ‘Mormon Wives’ drama. That was all good and fine for Jessi, though.
“I was involved in everything but I wasn’t the focus, and that was actually kind of nice,” she told What to Watch. “But I do hope that I can show more of my marriage and my backstory, because I have an interesting one with divorce and things that happened, so I think sharing that would be amazing. And then also, just more about business, because I am an entrepreneur and I have like five businesses, and I think that could be empowering to show.”
Jessi— who runs JZ Styles, a hair salon and hair care line— recently spoke out about all the hate she and the other cast members have received from the Mormon community since the show premiered.
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“We knew that the [show’s] name was gonna get backlash,” she said. “But I did not expect the landslide of hate…. It was insane to me that there were so many ‘good Mormons’ [hating on me]. Any hate comment I got, I would go click on their [social media] profile and it would be the most devout LDS [person] saying, ‘You’re a skank. You’re a ho. Burn in hell.’ Like, the meanest things.”
Layla Taylor
Divorcée Layla was finding her independence throughout the show’s inaugural season. The mom of two shocked fans when she revealed that she’d never had an orgasm.
A very happy update has come since the show aired, though, as Layla told People that she “very recently” experienced her very first orgasm. (She is now dating a Mormon man who is willing to appear on Season 2 of the show, if it gets renewed, according to an interview she gave this week to Us Weekly.)
“It’s not something you talk about on the daily. I think it’s something that should be, though,” she said. “… I think just having those open conversations will just normalize certain things and make women feel more comfortable and open with their sexuality, which I think is amazing.”
Not so ‘amazing’ is Layla’s current coparenting relationship with her ex-husband Clayton Wessel. She told Us Weekly this week that coparenting with Clayton— with whom she shares sons Oliver and Maxwell– has “gotten a lot worse recently.”
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“Hopefully we can get to a more peaceful place,” she told the magazine.
RELATED STORY: MomTok & Soft-Swinging: An Explanation of the Scandal That Launched ‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’
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I’m disgusted with myself that I’m so invested in this crap-heap