The cast of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives wants audiences to know that they’re not all swingers.
Speaking exclusively with Us Weekly, several wives wanted to make it clear to the public that the biggest misconception about Mormons — and MomTok by extension — is that they all engage in swinging.
“We’re not all swingers,” Whitney Leavitt exclusively told Us, addressing the June 2022 swinging scandal involving fellow costar Taylor Frankie Paul and her subsequent divorce from husband Tate Paul. However, Whitney, 31, noted that the scandal “actually didn’t affect me at all” after the news broke.
“I think it’d be different if I was actually involved in it, but I wasn’t, so I just took the clout from it,” Whitney told Us, adding that the scandal “didn’t affect me as negatively as it affected others.” In the same interview, Mayci Neely concurred, “We’re not all swingers,” adding, “You can be Mormon and wear a crop top and leggings as well.”
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“You don’t have to be perfect,” Mayci, 29, told Us. “You don’t have to be the stereotypical Mormon that people think we’re all supposed to be.”
Taylor, 30, revealed via TikTok in June 2022 that she and Tate had filed for divorce after engaging in “soft swinging” with other couples in their MomTok group. In her confession, Taylor admitted that she had taken things too far with one of the other husbands. She later called the situation the “tip of the iceberg” when it comes to her split from Tate, citing “a lot of other issues” in their relationship.
“I guess I’m pretty much known from my headlines of Swinger Mom,” Taylor exclusively told Us. “I mean, the arrest unfortunately was another big [thing] all over the internet. I would say those things are pretty negative.” (Taylor was arrested for domestic violence in February 2023 and pleaded guilty to aggravated assault six months later.)
While The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives has introduced Taylor to a new audience, she told Us that the swinging scandal is not something she wants “to be known for the rest of [her] life.”
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“For the show, I really wanted them to see me and more of me and my personality and a deeper level,” she said. “I feel like I come off so different online than I actually am in a conversation. So I felt like this was my chance to tell my story and get a deeper look into who I am.”
Cast member Demi Engemann also told Us that the biggest misconception of MomTok is that “we’re all swingers,” but despite the outside judgment, she’s not holding it against Taylor for exposing that “soft-swinger” lifestyle.
“[Taylor] owned it all,” Demi, 30, said. “That’s what I keep coming back to. It says a lot about someone who’s able to own their stuff.”
Layla Taylor, for her part, was similarly empathetic to Taylor’s struggle and explained how she was able to move past the scandal. “It was just having to remember that we’re all human and that we make mistakes,” Layla, 23, shared, telling Us that Taylor was “in a very hard time in her life and I can’t imagine the whole entire world finding out about her scandal at the same time as us.”
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“It was a very difficult situation and it’s so public what she had to go through, and I think she handled it the best way that she could,” Layla noted. “I just forgive her because she handled it the way that she could at that moment.”
In another interview with Us, Mormon Wives stars Jennifer Affleck and Mikayla Matthews concurred with their castmates about the “swinging” misconceptions, but Mikayla, 24, also wanted to note a “general” misunderstanding about MomTok as a whole.
“We’re not all just this perfect united front,” she told Us. “I feel like on social media, everyone’s like, ‘Oh, there’s these eight faces on the screen and they’re all dressed in the same outfit. They look unified, they look put together,’ and our show really kind of cuts back on all of that, all the perception. We’re normal, I guess.”
The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is now streaming on Hulu.
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi
