Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - March 20, 2026


Taylor Frankie Paul is a Bingeable Trainwreck and ABC and the Bachelorette Knew That Going Into This

Topics
Taylor Frankie Paul toxic
Women Are Being Gaslit About Birth, a Chat With Dr. Jennifer Lincoln The False Choice Between Tradwife and Girlboss

Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

149.02

Word count

1,733

Sentence count

123

Harmful content

Misogyny

21

sentences flagged

Toxicity

7

sentences flagged

Hate speech

8

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
00:00:00.000 Hey all, Jo here, and welcome to an emergency episode of Under the Influence.
00:00:12.080 Emergency episodes are kind of like the 80s equivalent of a very special episode of Mr.
00:00:17.720 Belvedere. Those very special episodes usually involved heroin, often the AIDS crisis, sometimes
00:00:24.620 a kid got kidnapped in a candy store. I think that one was on different strokes. Our kinds
00:00:29.620 of special episodes, or emergency episodes, deal with crap that happens to people on The Bachelorette 0.65
00:00:35.720 or The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. And in this case, it's both. So in case you missed it, ABC
00:00:43.320 has canceled Taylor Frankie Paul's entire Bachelorette season after a video surfaced from
00:00:49.500 an incident she had already pled guilty to three years ago. In the video, you can see Paul attacking
00:00:55.680 her ex-boyfriend, Dakota Mortensen, back in 2023. A Disney Entertainment spokesperson said,
00:01:03.120 in light of the newly released video just surfaced today, we've made the decision to not move
00:01:08.100 forward with the new season of The Bachelorette at this time, and our focus is on supporting the
00:01:12.520 family. Here's the thing. None of this, none of it, is new news. The very first episode of The
00:01:20.500 Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, actually aired police body camera footage of Paul's 2023 arrest
00:01:27.920 after getting into a physical altercation with Mortensen. And back then, she was charged with
00:01:33.480 aggravated assault, child abuse, and domestic violence in the presence of a child. These are
00:01:39.860 all things that ABC knew, that they knew very damn well when they chose to cast her as The
00:01:45.520 Bachelorette. But alas, when the information gets resurfaced in the media timeline, all of a sudden
00:01:51.800 they get spooked. And let's be honest, the media loves blaming and canceling women. The thing that
00:01:59.160 is killing me here, just freaking killing me. And look, I don't condone violence. I don't even
00:02:03.700 condone violence against men. Okay, let's not go there. But, but, but, but, again, Taylor Paul is
00:02:11.960 being essentially canceled. Well, people like, oh, I don't know. I don't know. The president of the
00:02:20.780 United States who is constantly accused of assault and abuse. Yeah, they're just they get to keep
00:02:28.620 doing their day jobs, just get to keep on chugging along. I do not like this timeline, friends. I do
00:02:35.740 not like it at all. I do not like it when a contestant on a reality show is held more
00:02:42.200 accountable than the leader of the free world. I mean, look, I don't think that Taylor Frankie Paul
00:02:49.640 was the best choice for a bachelorette in a world where the bachelorette is, you know, just a pure
00:02:58.940 and good places for kind people to find their soulmates. But that's not the world of The
00:03:05.580 Bachelorette, okay? The Bachelorette is just pure, trashy entertainment. And I say that with so 0.94
00:03:12.800 much love. The reason that Taylor Frankie Paul was chosen as The Bachelorette is because she 0.59
00:03:19.220 was going to breathe some life into this corpse of a franchise that has been struggling since 1.00
00:03:25.560 the 2010s. Okay. I just kind of love the Disney executives faked shock about any of this. I mean,
00:03:33.000 they're acting as though they never actually watched the series, The Secret Lives of Mormon
00:03:39.380 Wives, which talked about all of this. Taylor's brand is pure chaos, and she has never, ever
00:03:47.960 hidden that. In fact, she is the reason, or I mean, at least one of the main reasons
00:03:53.500 that Secret Lives of Mormon Wives has been so successful? Because people love a trainwreck, 0.95
00:04:01.040 and that is exactly what she is. Taylor Frankie Paul is an incredibly bingeable trainwreck, 0.98
00:04:08.000 and Disney knew exactly what they were getting into. They also pretty much knew that she wasn't 0.89
00:04:13.920 exactly single when she was shooting this season of The Bachelorette, or at least that her single 0.97
00:04:20.780 status had to be very much in question because in season four of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, 0.99
00:04:27.800 which Hulu dropped on March 12th, Taylor can't quit hooking up with her ex. Season four ends 0.95
00:04:34.020 with her leaving Utah to go to Los Angeles to begin filming The Bachelorette. But the problem 0.99
00:04:39.480 is right before she does that, she spends the night with Morton's and that's what all The
00:04:44.400 bachelors want to see before they're gearing up to find their one true love. Hulu, which is also
00:04:51.940 under the ABC Disney umbrella, they're in the same family, if you will, because, you know, 0.99
00:04:58.200 all of media is now one incestuous clusterfuck. They embraced all of the darkness behind Taylor 0.94
00:05:05.420 Frankie Paul. They laid all of the abuse allegations right out there and made them a storyline in the
00:05:12.760 show. Taylor Frankie Paul has never not been toxic. Okay. And like I said, like I just keep
00:05:18.700 saying over and over again, none of this was a surprise. Now, earlier this week, production of
00:05:24.920 season five of Secret Lives of Mormon Wives was apparently put on hold due to a new domestic
00:05:31.080 violence incident between Paul and Mortensen, which is under investigation by the Draper City
00:05:37.440 Police Department in Utah, but it was put on hold, not canceled. And I think we're probably
00:05:42.700 going to see that at some point. Now let's talk about the incident. Let's talk about the video
00:05:48.740 that TMZ obtained and released of the 2023 incident. In the video, Paul and Mortensen
00:05:56.360 are yelling at each other, and she throws not one, but three metal barstools at him,
00:06:03.020 one of which lands near her child, who starts crying. A rep for Paul said it omits context,
00:06:09.700 which it absolutely does. But no one looks good here. No one, you know, throwing barstools with
00:06:16.800 your kids around. Throwing barstools generally isn't the best. But again, none of this is at
00:06:23.040 all surprising. And even though details of the arrest were all in the public record,
00:06:27.940 The sources at Disney said they hadn't seen the video until TMZ posted it, which I just, I'm not sure if that's possible.
00:06:36.600 Okay, friends, I know very well how well reality producers vet people when they go on their shows, okay?
00:06:46.680 I've been covering the Bachelor and Bachelorette franchise pretty much since the beginning.
00:06:51.560 In fact, I think I've told you guys this before.
00:06:53.500 One of my jobs when I was running the news department of the celebrity magazines was to send my reporters.
00:07:02.680 We talked about this in our episode with Jordi Lippe, who is one of the reporters that I actually used to fly all over the world to go sneak around the Bachelor and Bachelorette proposal sites and get the information and break the scoop on who was the winner before it actually aired.
00:07:22.200 That is a thing I did.
00:07:22.980 That was my job, people.
00:07:24.620 Can you believe that used to be a job?
00:07:27.040 I mean, I think I really took it for granted that I was paid money, like cash money to do that.
00:07:32.840 So anyway, I've been friends with producers of these shows, and they wildly vet people before they let them be contestants.
00:07:42.640 I mean, some stuff does emerge, but, like, they know what they're getting into, okay?
00:07:48.040 Like, they don't like to have question marks.
00:07:50.820 The fact is, and you know, this is just my opinion here, but I think that ABC is being skittish
00:08:00.720 because of the reaction to the video and not the existence of the video. And I do have to say,
00:08:07.780 again, don't condone violence here. Don't condone throwing barstools, especially in front of
00:08:11.780 children. Okay. Just like keep it locked up when your kids are around, girl. I get it. The two of
00:08:18.480 you have this toxic thing that you both probably think is really hot and like that's what turns
00:08:23.460 you on about the other one that you fight all the time. But don't do it around your goddamn kids. 1.00
00:08:29.900 Grow the F up, people. Anyway, anyway, the reaction is that no one likes a violent woman. 1.00
00:08:36.780 No one likes an angry woman. And when Taylor starts getting painted as a violent and angry 1.00
00:08:40.960 woman again, which she was in many episodes of Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, ABC got spooked.
00:08:48.480 Because The Bachelorette cannot be angry. 0.78
00:08:51.080 She cannot be violent. 1.00
00:08:52.940 She cannot throw barstools. 1.00
00:08:54.700 Contestants, the lady contestants on The Bachelor, 1.00
00:08:57.040 they could probably throw some barstools, 1.00
00:08:58.340 but they're not going to win.
00:08:59.340 They're not going to win.
00:09:00.360 Because to be a type of America's sweetheart, 0.99
00:09:04.120 which is what they really want The Bachelorette to be, 0.64
00:09:06.160 they want her to be sweet and pure and virginal-ish,
00:09:10.180 even though Taylor is none of those things,
00:09:13.300 despite also being Mormon.
00:09:14.800 I mean, none of it makes sense. 0.99
00:09:15.800 Make it all make sense to me.
00:09:17.000 It doesn't, okay? 1.00
00:09:18.480 Anyway, America doesn't like an angry woman. 1.00
00:09:22.040 And that, that I think is why ABC is canceling this.
00:09:25.780 It's why, you know, there's more consequences for Taylor than there are for, say, you know, like I said, the president of the United States.
00:09:33.860 Alas, we'll talk about this more coming up.
00:09:36.480 It is only, only excellent press for The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, which I have no doubt will continue and will continue to thrive.
00:09:45.300 I'm also in shock, people.
00:09:46.780 I am in shock that everyone is lying to you, has not been picked up for a television series yet, given the insane success of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.
00:09:56.580 But, you know, just throwing it out there, still available. Still available, people.
00:10:01.420 We pitched a bunch of the networks. We have a great director involved. We have a great writer involved.
00:10:06.420 And the networks were like, oh, we already have a woman show.
00:10:10.580 Guys, I'm here. Give me a call. 1.00
00:10:12.900 You want some delicious, delicious trad wifey trash? I am here for you. This is my wheelhouse, 1.00
00:10:20.780 okay? Anyway, at the end of the day, Taylor Frankie Paul is going to be just fine. She is
00:10:27.240 going to be more famous than ever. It doesn't matter that some sponsors, I think Cinnabon
00:10:31.820 canceled their sponsorship with her. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. This is the kind of
00:10:35.780 thing that cements someone's fame for a long time instead of tamping it down. America loves a train
00:10:43.840 wreck. America loves chaos. And Taylor Frankie Paul is a train wreck chaos machine who's just
00:10:50.160 going to keep chugging along the tracks of American celebrity.
00:11:05.780 We'll see you next time.
00:11:35.780 You