Mayci Neeley, Miranda Hope, Whitney Leavitt, Jessi Draper and Mikayla Matthews on 'The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives' season four.

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The long-awaited update on The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives season five arrived just in time, one day before Hulu would host its second Get Real House 2026 spotlighting the streamer and ABC’s unscripted slate. The slew of new show announcements on Wednesday out of the presentation expands Hulu’s reality TV offerings and includes spinoffs for Disney’s most buzzy franchises, Dancing With the Stars and Mormon Wives, the latter which is now in “active preproduction,” says Rob Mills, evp of unscripted & alternative entertainment at Walt Disney Television.

With Mormon Wives set to resume production after a monthlong filming pause and internal investigation into star Taylor Frankie Paul over domestic violence allegations, The Hollywood Reporter spoke with the head of unscripted below about ABC and Hulu’s new offerings, discussing the pressure around replicating last season’s Dancing With the Stars success (“It scares the hell out of me!”), what viewers can expect when Mormon Wives returns (with or without Paul), if we’ll ever see Paul’s scrapped season of The Bachelorette and why The Bachelor franchise “is not going anywhere.”

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The news just came out that Mormon Wives will resume production on season five. I confirmed from a source close to production that means the investigation conducted by the show’s production (via a third-party law firm) has concluded. We also reported that the door is open for Taylor Frankie Paul to return if and when she’s ready, and that the show has been supportive of her during this hiatus. Are you hoping she would return? And can you share details about how quickly you are picking back up?

With picking back up, what we said was that the show is returning to production. That does not mean that immediately we got cameras up. This has been a pretty significant break. We have to look at where everyone is, what the stories will be. So I would say right now we are in active preproduction, and we’re figuring that out.

In terms of Taylor, first and foremost for me is just making sure that on a human level, she’s good and being taken care of. And we’ll discuss the professional stuff once you get past all of that.

There has been a lot reported since all of this has gone down with Taylor Frankie Paul, including the investigation and care that went into making sure the Mormon Wives cast was comfortable when the cameras do pick back up. Now it seems everything is out in the open, so they will be able to address it all freely, which had been Jessi Draper’s concern. Have you thought about how the show will handle having so much happen when cameras weren’t rolling?

Yeah, I think a lot of that will be led by the cast. I think you used the exact right word. We wanted to make sure that they really are taken care of. And it’s really why we proactively made them [the cast] executive producers [for season four]. They really will be the ones that will inform how the story is being told.

Is the cast now feeling good about picking back up, whether Taylor is involved or not? Are their concerns lifted; is the vibe that everyone is ready?

Definitely the vibe is that everyone is ready. I don’t think we have the nuances figured out, but we wanted to make sure everybody really wanted to get back. And they feel good about it. We never would have gone back if it was anything other than that.

Also today you announced an expansion of Mormon Wives, with a new series set in Orange County. With the breakout success of Mormon Wives — and resurgence of DWTS, which is also getting a spinoff — would you say those are your two biggest priorities in terms of unscripted franchises at Disney right now?

Yeah. I mean, when you greenlight something, you never say, “This is a franchise.” That being said, when we titled the show The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, we did think, “Okay, there’s a possibility in success that you can do: Secret Lives of Mormon Wives of Blank.” And once the original Mormon Wives took off immediately, we definitely started talking about it. But as you can see, there’s been a lot of time between that and when we’ve announced this show. So we’ve tried to be

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