Taylor Frankie Paul Says It Was “Shocking” To Watch Her Family Defend Dakota
It was hard for her to re-live.
Just because Taylor Frankie Paul is the star of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives doesn’t mean the show is easy for her to watch. To this day, Paul says she’s never seen the entirety of Season 1. She was able to make it through Season 2, but there was one moment that was particularly tough: the barbecue scene in Episode 2, when her family defended Paul’s ex Dakota Mortensen after she found out he had lied about seeing another woman.
“The barbecue scene was a lot harder to watch than I thought it would be,” Paul says. “Before I saw it, people kept bringing it up, and I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, that was a hard day.’ But when I watched it, I understood why they were asking.”
According to her, it was one of the more “shocking” scenes to see on screen. (It’s up there with seeing Demi Engemann’s fight with her mother and discovering Mayci Neeley was going through in vitro fertilization.) “Did I cry watching it? Absolutely. If I were to go back and re-watch it today, I’d probably still cry,” Paul says about the tense argument.
In the scene, Paul cried while her family — especially her mom, stepdad, and brother — staunchly defended Mortensen, despite him betraying Paul’s trust. Paul’s sister was the only one to encourage them to stay apart while they worked out their issues. “It’s a heavy scene. At that table, everyone’s feelings were so heightened,” she says. “It's really sad when kids are involved and you want things to work, but they just aren’t.”
Despite this, it was easier for Paul to stomach watching Season 2 than Season 1. “I still don’t think I’ve seen every detail of Season 1,” she says. “I did all my press work without seeing it — just watching bits and pieces on TikTok. It was really triggering.”
Things are different this time around. “I’ve had so much therapy. I’ve stretched my tolerance for watching hard situations,” she says. “The barbecue scene was very hard to watch, but it was something I was able to handle. I couldn’t have said that six months ago.”
She has a specific method for tuning in. “I have to watch it alone, usually piece by piece,” she says. “I get so much anxiety that I have to turn it off and come back to it.”
