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Two years ago, influencer Taylor Frankie Paul blew up the internet when she went live on TikTok to tell her followers that she and her then-husband were getting a divorce.
The real surprise, however, was Paul’s admission that the couple was splitting because she’d broken the rules of their “soft-swinging” agreement, where they’d been swapping spouses with others in their LDS community, but would never “go all the way.” The video rippled across TikTok as people wondered who else from “MomTok” — the group of young, Mormon moms who had cultivated a hefty social following — could be involved in the scandal, and the cameras began rolling on Hulu‘s The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives not long after.
That stroke of genius timing is all thanks to their manager, Select Management Group’s Danielle Pistotnik, who saw too much potential in these women’s lives to keep them relegated to social media, even before any swinging scandal had taken place.
“This sounds insane, but the first time that I was on a call with all of them, I was like, ‘There has to be cameras here.’ The dynamic that they have is so funny,” Pistotnik, who is also an executive producer on the series, told Deadline. “It didn’t make sense for the entirety of their career to be subject to a 60-second video. It was so clear that there should be something long form and people should get to see this, especially because they’re Mormons, and I think there’s such a misconception of what those people are. In reality, these girls are just funny and cool and pretty and you want to hang out with them.”
And she was right. When The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives debuted, it quickly became Hulu’s most-watched unscripted season premiere of the year, besting even the most recent season of The Kardashians. Clearly, there is an audience here that transcends the confines of TikTok.
Pistotnik serves as an EP alongside Select Management Group’s Lisa Filipelli and Georgia Berger, who helped get the series off the ground with unscripted producer Russell Jay-Staglik at Jeff Jenkins Productions.
All three women remained tight-lipped on the series’ performance beyond what Hulu has already revealed, but admit it’s nice to see their suspicions were spot on.
“One of the things we’ve always maintained is that there is a world for digitally native talent to cross over,” Filipelli said, pointing out that “95% of an influencer’s life is not online,” meaning there’s plenty of ground for reality TV to cover despite their social media presence.
In a statement to Deadline, Jay-Staglik said his team “immediately recognized the potential in the women of #MomTok as a cast of characters,” but they took extra care to ensure that they were “hitting the right tone.”
“We were extremely excited and motivated by the prospect of creating a series that could balance everything viewers love in a fun, drama and humor-filled docusoap, alongside a genuine exploration of faith and religion – and I have to say, I think our team hit the mark,” he continued. “There’s so much more to these women than #MomTok and a swinging scandal, and we’re thrilled to be the producer that both Hulu and Select trusted to bring their stories to light.”
Season 1 picks up just a few months after that infamous TikTok Live as Paul, the self-proclaimed founder of MomTok, is trying to reconcile with her friends after dragging them into the drama. The series, which debuted on September 6, also stars Demi Engemann, Jen Affleck, Jessi Ngatikaura, Layla Taylor, Mayci Neeley, Mikayla Matthews and Whitney Leavitt — all of whom vehemently denied being part of any swinging scandal.
Swingers or not, these women’s lives are ripe for reality TV-making. That was the crux of the pitch used to land their deal with Hulu, which they felt was the ideal home for Secret Lives, having shepherded series like The Kardashians and Vanderpump Villa to much success.
“The second we knew that Hulu was interested, we we stopped,” Filipelli said. “We were like, ‘Don’t go anywhere else.'”
As unbelievable as it may be, that scandal is only the beginning for these women. Much of the ongoing spectacle comes from the ways in which their Mormonism continually butts heads with their fairly progressive world views, from attending a burlesque show to having children out of wedlock and more.
“They’re starting to experience life when others have maybe experienced it in their college years, and and then on top of [that]…these women are all the breadwinners,” which creates natural tensions within their LDS families, Berger said. “Seeing it from a different lens was kind of the pitch that we had initially gone out with, and I think that’s what the show ends up being.”
The church hasn’t officially weighed in, per se, though it did recently release a statement that called out recent “a number of recent productions” for inaccurately depicting the religion by resorting to “stereotypes or gross misrepresentations that are in poor taste and have real-life consequences for people of faith.”
Pistotnik pushes back on that characterization when it comes to Secret Lives, saying that the producers were “so respectful to of the culture.”
“It doesn’t at all feel like they were asking us to sensationalize Mormonism in a way a lot of mainstream media does,” she said. “That was the most important thing to us, having this team that is willing to take these girls’ leads on what’s the appropriate story.”
The Select Management group appears ready to take the heat, since they have no plans of ending things here.
They revealed to Deadline that the cameras captured enough footage for around 14 episodes, though Season 1 is only eight. Does that mean Season 2 could be well on its way?
“I don’t know if we can speak on that, but we’re excited to see what happens,” Pistotnik cryptically responded, while Filipelli added, “There’s so much more there, and I think audiences are going to just be really excited if we continue to tell the story.”
