ABC just cancelled an entire season of The Bachelorette 3 days to air
Sophie Rose · 24 Mar 2026 · 7 min read
ABC pulled Taylor Frankie Paul's season of The Bachelorette on Thursday, March 19th - three days before the scheduled Sunday premiere.
They'd filmed the entire season. She'd done the press tour; the promotional materials were ready. And then TMZ published a 2023 video showing Paul physically assaulting her ex-partner Dakota Mortensen in front of her daughter.
The network had no idea the video existed. A source told TMZ that nobody at ABC had seen the footage before it was published Thursday morning. Within hours, Disney pulled the plug on everything. An entire season of television. Gone.
This is the influencer partnership risk that keeps marketing teams up at night. And it just cost ABC millions of dollars.
Taylor Frankie Paul, if you’re unfamiliar, is one of the stars of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, a Hulu reality series. She has 6.1 million TikTok followers and 2.3 million on Instagram.
She was announced as The Bachelorette in September 2025 - a shocking choice that fans hoped would revive a dying franchise.
Paul was arrested in 2023 for domestic violence after an altercation with Mortensen. Her daughter was present. The arrest played out in the Season 1 premiere of Mormon Wives. She pleaded guilty to aggravated assault in August 2025 and the other charges were dismissed.
But nobody had seen the actual video of that 2023 incident until TMZ published it Thursday morning.
The footage shows Paul putting Mortensen in a headlock, kicking him, and hurling multiple metal chairs at him while her daughter Indy cries in the background. One chair allegedly hit the child.
By Thursday afternoon, Disney announced they were cancelling the season. Production on Mormon Wives has also paused.
ABC filmed an entire season. Months of production, crew salaries, location costs, post-production work, marketing materials, press tours, freaking promotional campaigns.
All of that money is now sunk cost with zero return.
The show was supposed to premiere Sunday, March 22nd. That's three days notice to replace a prime time slot. Whatever they air instead won't have the same promotional push, the same audience anticipation, the same ratings potential.
And The Bachelorette franchise was already struggling. Ratings have been declining for years. Casting Paul was a calculated risk - use her existing massive social media following to bring new viewers back to the show.
That gamble just exploded spectacularly.
Working with anyone carries risk - employees, celebrities, traditional spokespeople can all have scandals.
But influencers present specific challenges that make partnerships particularly volatile.
Their entire brand is their personal life. You're not hiring an actor to play a character - you're hiring someone's actual identity, relationships, and behaviour. When that behaviour is problematic, there's no separating the person from the product. Taylor Frankie Paul wasn't playing the Bachelorette; she was the Bachelorette.
Her personal conduct is the product.
Influencers have documented their entire lives online. Years of videos, photos, tweets, TikToks exist somewhere. Any of it can resurface at any time.
ABC couldn't have known about the 2023 video because it was private footage only released when Mortensen's attorney presumably shared it with media as part of their current legal battle.
When you partner with an influencer, their drama hurls your brand into the spotlight. When a scandal occurs, their massive following pays attention. The story becomes news, media outlets cover it, social media discusses it.
And your brand gets dragged into every headline, every comment section, every analysis piece about what went wrong.
What happened to due diligence?
ABC knew about Paul's 2023 arrest. They cast her anyway.
The arrest was public record and aired on her reality show. They made a calculated decision that her existing notoriety and massive following outweighed the domestic violence charge she'd literally pleaded guilty to.
But they didn't know about the video. How could they? It was private footage from an incident in someone's home. No amount of background checking would have uncovered it. Until Thursday morning when TMZ published it, that video didn't exist in the public domain.
This is the impossible position brands face with influencer partnerships. You can check criminal records, review social media history, Google their name, interview references. And there will still be things you don't know. You can’t search for videos that haven't surfaced yet or accusations that haven't been made public.
The fascinating part about this situation is that ABC made an informed bad bet.
The thinking was probably that the charges had been reduced through plea deal, other charges were dismissed, and enough time had passed that they could frame it as "learning from past mistakes" or "second chances" or whatever redemption narrative reality TV loves.
Then the video dropped.
And boom. Suddenly it wasn't an abstract criminal charge from three years ago - it was footage of violence against a partner in front of a crying child.
The visual evidence changed everything. And the ongoing 2026 investigation suggests this wasn't past behaviour but a continuing pattern.
So, what’s a brand to do?
Thorough vetting helps but won't eliminate risk. But YOU MIGHT AS WELL FREAKING TRY.
Background checks, social media audits, reference calls, criminal record searches - do all of it. But understand that even perfect due diligence won't protect you from footage that hasn't surfaced yet or accusations that haven't been made public.
Behaviour clauses in contracts matter. Build in language that allows you to terminate partnerships immediately if certain issues emerge. ABC presumably had clauses allowing them to cancel, which is why they could pull the season so quickly.
Make sure your contracts protect you legally even if they can't protect you financially.
Consider the cost-benefit ruthlessly. Is the influencer's reach worth the potential downside? ABC thought Paul's 8.4 million combined followers and reality TV fame would revive The Bachelorette's declining ratings.
They bet millions of dollars on that calculation. It didn't work.
This is influencer partnership risk in its purest form. No matter how much money you have on the table, sometimes it’s just not worth it babes.
-Sophie Randell, Writer