The solid of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives needs audiences to know that they’re not all swingers.
Talking completely with Us Weekly, a number of wives needed to make it clear to the general public that the largest false impression about Mormons — and MomTok by extension — is that all of them interact in swinging.
“We’re not all swingers,” Whitney Leavitt completely instructed Us, addressing the June 2022 swinging scandal involving fellow costar Taylor Frankie Paul and her subsequent divorce from husband Tate Paul. Nonetheless, Whitney, 31, famous that the scandal “really didn’t have an effect on me in any respect” after the information broke.
“I believe it’d be totally different if I used to be really concerned in it, however I wasn’t, so I simply took the clout from it,” Whitney instructed Us, including that the scandal “didn’t have an effect on me as negatively because it affected others.” In the identical interview, Mayci Neely concurred, “We’re not all swingers,” including, “You may be Mormon and put on a crop high and leggings as properly.”
“You don’t should be excellent,” Mayci, 29, instructed Us. “You don’t should be the stereotypical Mormon that individuals suppose we’re all speculated to be.”
Taylor, 30, revealed through TikTok in June 2022 that she and Tate had filed for divorce after partaking in “delicate swinging” with different {couples} of their MomTok group. In her confession, Taylor admitted that she had taken issues too far with one of many different husbands. She later referred to as the state of affairs the “tip of the iceberg” in relation to her break up from Tate, citing “loads of different points” of their relationship.
“I suppose I’m just about recognized from my headlines of Swinger Mother,” Taylor completely instructed Us. “I imply, the arrest sadly was one other massive [thing] all around the web. I might say these issues are fairly damaging.” (Taylor was arrested for home violence in February 2023 and pleaded responsible to aggravated assault six months later.)
Whereas The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives has launched Taylor to a brand new viewers, she instructed Us that the swinging scandal is just not one thing she needs “to be recognized for the remainder of [her] life.”
“For the present, I actually needed them to see me and extra of me and my character and a deeper degree,” she mentioned. “I really feel like I come off so totally different on-line than I really am in a dialog. So I felt like this was my likelihood to inform my story and get a deeper look into who I’m.”
Forged member Demi Engemann additionally instructed Us that the largest false impression of MomTok is that “we’re all swingers,” however regardless of the skin judgment, she’s not holding it towards Taylor for exposing that “soft-swinger” life-style.
“[Taylor] owned all of it,” Demi, 30, mentioned. “That’s what I preserve coming again to. It says quite a bit about somebody who’s in a position to personal their stuff.”
Layla Taylor, for her half, was equally empathetic to Taylor’s wrestle and defined how she was in a position to transfer previous the scandal. “It was simply having to keep in mind that we’re all human and that we make errors,” Layla, 23, shared, telling Us that Taylor was “in a really laborious time in her life and I can’t think about the entire total world discovering out about her scandal similtaneously us.”
“It was a really troublesome state of affairs and it’s so public what she needed to undergo, and I believe she dealt with it the easiest way that she might,” Layla famous. “I simply forgive her as a result of she dealt with it the best way that she might at that second.”
In one other interview with Us, Mormon Wives stars Jennifer Affleck and Mikayla Matthews concurred with their castmates concerning the “swinging” misconceptions, however Mikayla, 24, additionally needed to notice a “common” misunderstanding about MomTok as an entire.
“We’re not all simply this excellent united entrance,” she instructed Us. “I really feel like on social media, everybody’s like, ‘Oh, there’s these eight faces on the display screen and so they’re all wearing the identical outfit. They appear unified, they appear put collectively,’ and our present actually type of cuts again on all of that, all of the notion. We’re regular, I suppose.”
The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is now streaming on Hulu.
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi