It’s been over six months since Taylor Frankie Paul was announced as the new lead of The Bachelorette. Now, three days before the premiere of the new season, ABC has decided not to air Paul’s journey.
This comes after a video was posted on TMZ of Paul getting into physical altercation with her ex-boyfriend and co-parent, Dakota Mortensen. In a statement to Glamour, a Disney Entertainment Television spokesperson says, “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.”
While ABC should be applauded for doing the right thing, you have to ask: Did it even need to get to this point? And why did it take so long?
When The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star was first announced as the next Bachelorette, I had my reservations. She was going to be the first female lead not part of a previous season, which was an exciting idea, but unless you’d watched the Hulu reality series or were aware of her history as part of #MomTok, an influencer squad of dancing Mormon moms that went viral for “soft-swinging,” your first reaction might have been, “Who?” At least, that was mine.
Even so, I wasn’t necessarily opposed to Paul’s casting at first. I’m all for fresh blood in the franchise, which has seen its luster fade thanks to newer, shinier reality shows like Love Island and Love Is Blind. The only thing constant in this world is change, and as much as we try to fight it, you have to evolve. I just didn’t expect The Bachelorette to evolve like this.
But as I put together a news article on Taylor Frankie Paul’s casting shortly after the announcement, I found myself being more and more surprised that this was the woman being given the so-called keys to the OG dating show kingdom. The 31-year-old is a single mom to three kids. While it would be unfair for me to pass judgement on that, it did give me pause knowing the history of the show. For one, there’s a massive time commitment involved with being on The Bachelorette that feels untenable for anyone with children. I’d say the same about a man who had primary custody of three kids.
Secondly, I was concerned about the quality of her contestants. We know now that most people who go on reality dating shows do so to raise their public profiles, and there’s something I find questionable about men willing to go on TV to date a woman with three young children that already have father figures in their life. I know plenty of men who have dated and married single mothers—but they’re not doing it on broadcast television in a six-week timespan.
Still, times have changed. ABC is part of a global business with Disney (which includes Hulu) and synergy is to be expected. It’s a smart business plan to take someone who people love to watch with a built-in following and cross-promote. They’ve been doing for years on Dancing With the Stars.
The cynic in me didn’t think Paul would find a lasting match out of this. (And I might be right: It’s since come to light that she slept with Mortensen the night before she left to film The Bachelorette, and things have reportedly already imploded with the person she’s rumored to have wound up with.) However, I planned to watch with an open mind. As a journalist who has covered the Bachelor franchise since 2012, it’s my job to sit down with the leads and their contestants throughout their season. No matter what their edit looks like on screen, I want to hear them out when we meet for interviews.
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