ABC cancels 'Bachelorette' season with Utahn Taylor Frankie Paul, citing 2023 video

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• ABC on Thursday canceled "The Bachelorette" with Utahn Taylor Frankie Paul due to a 2023 video.
• The video involved an altercation between Paul and her ex-boyfriend, which led to charges.
• Paul, an influencer, was an unusual choice for the show; she was not from "The Bachelor" franchise.

LOS ANGELES — ABC has scrubbed the upcoming season of "The Bachelorette," starring Utahn Taylor Frankie Paul, citing a newly released video from 2023.

Thursday's unprecedented cancellation of the already filmed season of the long-running reality television show comes days before it was to premiere, on Sunday.

"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," a statement from Disney Entertainment Television said.

The statement appeared to reference a 2023 video of an altercation between Paul and her ex-boyfriend Dakota Mortensen that was published by TMZ on Thursday. Paul was arrested in 2023 and charged with aggravated assault and other offenses, including domestic violence in the presence of a child. She pleaded guilty that August to a misdemeanor charge of aggravated assault; the other charges were dismissed.

A Draper police spokesperson told People magazine that there was an open domestic violence investigation of Paul and Mortensen, and that allegations have been made in both directions. Mortensen is the father of one of Paul's three children.

Representatives for Paul and Mortensen didn't immediately return requests for comment. ABC's statement didn't include details on what the network planned to do with the show's timeslot.

Paul, who was promoting Season 22 as recently as Wednesday on ABC's "Good Morning America" and on the red carpet before Sunday's Oscars telecast, was an unusual choice to helm "The Bachelorette." Unlike previous leads, the 31-year-old had not appeared on the "Bachelor" franchise before — a departure from the typical practice of casting runners-up from previous seasons.

Her selection did offer synergy, though, as she also stars on "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives," a Hulu reality show. Both Hulu and ABC are owned by Disney. In a statement confirming her casting in October, ABC credited Paul with "igniting 'MomTok' and going viral."

Paul became known as an influencer in the #MomTok community, a group of Utah women sharing their lives on TikTok. She made news when she announced, in 2022, that she had "stepped out" of an agreement with her husband in terms of relationships with other couples and they were getting divorced.

Paul posted on Instagram in December that filming had wrapped on "The Bachelorette," which is hosted by Jesse Palmer.

Domestic violence resources

Help for people in abusive relationships can be found by contacting:

• Utah Domestic Violence Coalition: Utah's confidential statewide, 24-hour domestic violence hotline at 1-800-897-LINK (5465)
• YWCA Utah Survivor Services: 801-537-8600
• Utah's statewide child abuse and neglect hotline: 1-855-323-DCFS (3237)
• National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233

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The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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Andrew Dalton and Alicia Rancilio