The forthcoming season of The Bachelorette has been cancelled after a newly released video showed its star, Taylor Frankie Paul, as the aggressor in a domestic violence incident.
Alums of the series claim that ABC had to have known about Paul’s troubling history.
“There’s no way ABC could have been blindsided with this,“ early Bachelor and Bachelorette producer Michael Carroll told TMZ a day before the video leaked.
The video from 2023—which shows Paul, 31, throwing metal stools and punches at her ex, Dakota Mortensen—was released just days before the new season of The Bachelorette was set to air. Paul and Mortensen’s relationship conflict has been the subject of high-profile coverage, including Paul entering a plea in abeyance to third-degree felony assault in 2023.
Despite her legal run-ins, Paul remained a reality TV sensation, leading the wildly popular Hulu show, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. The show, which premiered its fourth season last week, revealed that her on-again, off-again relationship with Moretnesen, 33, continued right up until she began filming The Bachelorette.
“The casting department—at least the executive producers—was completely aware of who this person was, especially because it seems to me like a publicity grab to get this contestant,” Carroll added.
He said ABC likely did the “quickest” vetting possible to nab a big star like Paul, who was announced as the show’s lead in September.
Though he no longer works at ABC, Caroll said the network’s casting was “unbelievably strict” when he produced for the franchises.
“You pretty much had to be a Mormon wife at that point,” Caroll quipped, listing that the network would conduct background, medical, and mental capacity checks on any potential contestants. “They wouldn’t even let anyone who had any kind of charges against them. You were just a clean teen back there if you were on the show.”
“There’s no way ABC could have been blindsided with this,” he continued.
“They are in total cahoots with executive producers up until the moment of filming,” he added, noting how ABC executives are on-set during the first day of shooting.
In a statement to the Daily Beast about the video of Paul, a Disney spokesperson said, “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.”
Representatives for ABC and Disney did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment.
Former stars of the hit ABC franchises are speaking out as well.
“As a former Bachelor contestant, I can tell you that ABC thoroughly vets every part of your personal history," Jillian Anderson, a contestant on the show’s 19th season in 2015, said on X.
“Given that Frankie Taylor Paul already had a public profile, it’s hard to believe they didn’t know exactly who she was going into this season,” she continued.
Paul’s fallout is not the first controversy to mar the hit ABC series.
Soon after they wrapped the season, an investigation revealed that 2024 Bachelorette winner Devi Strader had a police record that included both a felony burglary arrest and a restraining order. Midway through The Bachelorette‘s 2018 season, news broke that contestant Lincoln Adim had been convicted of groping a woman two years prior.
Even the network’s older spinoff, The Golden Bachelor, has seen its fair share of casting controversies, including two contestants who were found to have active restraining orders against them.
