The glossy-haired influencers of Hulu's The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives have built an empire from dance videos, brand sponsorships, and televised drama. Yet as the show's third season arrives on Disney+ in the UK, practising members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are speaking out about its sensationalised portrayal of their faith.
Reality TV Drama Versus Religious Reality
The series, which follows the MomTok group of twenty-something influencers, became Hulu's most-watched unscripted premiere of 2024. It features catfights, icy brunches, and plastic surgery recovery scenes set against aerial shots of temples. However, for many orthodox Latter-day Saints, the representation feels deeply inaccurate.
Dallin Shumway, a 27-year-old social worker in Texas, notes this isn't the first time the entertainment industry has misrepresented his community. "The angle always seems to be... these are the crazy Americans who live out West," he says. "It doesn't really represent the life of a Latter-day Saint very clearly at all."
Ken Brueck, a 43-year-old software professional from Utah, jokes the show should be titled: "The Open Lives of People that Left the Church." He believes the title panders to stereotypes that Latter-day Saints lead double lives. "That's where Secret Lives makes me uncomfortable," Brueck explains, "because there's gonna be some percentage of people who will form their opinions of people like me based on the people in that show."
The MomTok Scandal and Theological Tensions
The third season, which premiered on Thursday 13 November, continues exploring the fallout from a "soft swinging" scandal that nearly destroyed the MomTok group. The controversy began when cast member Taylor Frankie Paul revealed during a TikTok livestream that she was divorcing her husband following intimate encounters with other couples in Salt Lake City.
Throughout the series, cast members engage in ongoing discussions about their faith's social conservatism, which prohibits sex before marriage and homosexuality. In the first episode, Paul admits she was pressured into marrying her first husband because they were sexually active. Several stars discuss wanting to "break stigmas" and modernise the faith, with some drinking alcohol while others explore ketamine therapy.
Church Response and Community Backlash
Last year, the Church issued a statement addressing recent media portrayals, though it didn't specifically name Hulu. The memo criticised productions that rely on "sensationalism and inaccuracies" and "resort to stereotypes or gross misrepresentations that are in poor taste and have real-life consequences for people of faith."
Dr Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, a Chicago-based sex therapist who works with people in the faith, describes the show as "salacious and immature." She argues it portrays Latter-day Saint women as "hapless" and "repressed idiots" who break free in "indulgent, reckless" ways.
Sarah Jane Weaver, editor of the Deseret News in Salt Lake City, has called the cast members "outliers" who are "profiting" from flaunting bad behaviour. "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is not a representation of me or my friends or my daughters or their friends," she wrote last year.
David Snell, host of the Keystone podcast, criticises the show's use of religious imagery as "clickbait." After watching all ten episodes of the new season, he noted the deliberate vagueness about which cast members remain active in the religion. "It makes you feel a little bit like a zoo animal sometimes," he admits.
Seeking Silver Linings in Stereotypes
Despite their criticisms, some Latter-day Saints acknowledge potential benefits to the portrayal. Snell suggests the show might help destigmatise long-standing stereotypes about Church members being "dressed like pioneers" and "milking cows all the time."
"There is some value in portraying Latter-day Saints as people that come in all shapes and sizes," Snell concedes. "But generally, 'orthodoxy' is somewhere in the middle."
Shumway points out that life within the Church exists on a spectrum, and he validates the experiences of those who have left. "I would be remiss if I tried to paint this picture where all the criticism that the Church gets is invalid," he says. "You can't have an institution as large as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints without some criticism that is actually warranted."
As Snell reflects on finding a silver lining, he concludes: "We are real people and we've got our own stories. Secret Lives is an extreme end of that spectrum, but I do see value in the show as something that might help people move away from traditional stereotypes."
All three seasons of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives are now available on Hulu in the U.S. and Disney+ in the U.K.
