Credit: Disney/Michael Kirchoff
The executive vice president of unscripted for Walt Disney TV, Rob Mills, has spoken out amid the announcement that The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives would resume production, and questions are continuing to pop up about whether Taylor Frankie Paul‘s season of The Bachelorette will ever air.
After Taylor got into an alleged domestic dispute with her baby daddy, Dakota Mortensen, production on season five of SLOMW was paused, and Taylor’s season of The Bachelorette was pulled.
In a conversation with Variety, Rob discussed what’s going on with The Bachelorette and SLOMW.
When asked about the status of The Bachelorette, Rob shared, “Everything with that is one day at a time. There’s really nothing new to report right now.”
It was noted that there had been a lot of discussions about whether Taylor should have starred on The Bachelorette or not. Rob was asked about how he feels regarding the decision, given everything that’s gone down.
“I had met with Taylor. She had said, ‘Look, I’m raising three kids with different fathers; one, I have a phenomenal co-parenting relationship with. The other one is a challenge, but I’m really looking for a partner and somebody who can help me,'” he shared.
“Her motives were really very sincere,” he continued. “Walking into that, that was a really exciting story to tell through the lens of The Bachelorette. Obviously, with everything that happened and everything everyone’s going through, that’s the hard part. Everything that Taylor’s had to go through has been really hard. The season itself is really, really fantastic. It was a great journey for her.”
Rob also touched on SLOMW resuming production. Specifically, Rob addressed reports that Taylor and Dakota would not be part of the show when it resumed, which is something Taylor said on Instagram was ‘not the call’ she had received.
“There’s not much to say, other than we are clear to go back into production,” Rob said. “That does not mean we’re filming tomorrow. It just means production is resuming, and we’re trying to see what that looks like.”
As far as Taylor goes, Rob said they want to make sure that “as a human being, on a personal level she’s being taken care of.”
“What shooting looks like will be decided later,” he continued. “Everything is still kind of day to day — this was just an announcement that we are just going back into production. That’s a process. Because we’ve been down for so long, we have to figure out what this season is even going to look like. What are the storylines?”
He also shared that they were about halfway through production and would likely not scrap what they had already taped.
Rob also denied they were waiting to see if Taylor got charged with domestic violence before deciding to proceed with continuing season five.
“It was just simply making sure that we were really being careful and thoughtful and working with the entire cast, as well as producers, and making sure everybody felt this was the right decision all around,” he shared.