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According to a rumor, Secret Lives of Mormon Wives‘ Taylor Frankie Paul may be replaced by The Traitors star Maura Higgins (who lost to Rob Rausch in February) for a “live shooting” of The Bachelorette, as Maura reacted.
Last week, ABC canceled Taylor’s season of The Bachelorette after a 2023 video surfaced of her allegedly getting physical with her then-boyfriend, Dakota Mortensen. Recently, another rumor suggested that her co-stars, Layla Taylor and Miranda Hope, would be dual leads for the next season.
“[My] ABC exec friend said that they are looking into getting Maura Higgins to be the new bachelorette and do a live shooting of it,” wrote a source to @deuxmoi on Instagram. “They shut down Layla and Miranda as a dual season and are trying to steer away from the SLOMW girlies.”
In the comments, Maura reacted with an ‘eyes’ emoji.
Back in September, Taylor revealed her casting for The Bachelorette.
“It has not hit me,” she said at the time on Call Her Daddy. “It’s not gonna [feel real] until I think as the limo’s pulling up, and I’ll be meeting the people… So, nervous. How did I get here? In my head, I’m like, ‘How is this happening?’”
“I don’t know [how I got it], but … [fans] were like, ‘You should go on The Bachelorette. Obviously, my relationship [with Dakota] didn’t work out, or it wasn’t working out, and people could see that,” she went on. “They’re like, ‘You should just, you know, go on The Bachelorette.’ I used to see little side comments, so I made a funny [TikTok] video, and this was actually three years prior. I made the same video, but I was like, ‘Hey, I’m single. I think I’m looking for someone … I hope someone will take me, you know, I’m on probation.’”
But Taylor said she was “mostly” joking.
“I literally was like, ‘Ah, let’s just say The Bachelorette, set it off,’ and then once I did, people started tagging The Bachelorette, like, ‘You should, you should, you should,’ and I don’t know if that got their attention or someone was like, ‘Yeah, maybe,’ and then it was mostly [a] joke to me, like unattainable,” she added. “[Then] I heard there was some talking, and then it was like we had a meeting, and then I still didn’t believe it until, like, I got the invitation, ‘Will you be our Bachelorette?’ And I was just … shaking, pacing back and forth. I was like, ‘There’s no way. There’s no way.’”