Secret Lives of Mormon Wives on swinging scandals, friendship fallouts and religious backlash

From allegations of infidelity to oscillating scandals, the secret life of Mormon wives offers an overview of an version of Mormone life very far from the perception of the traditional public.

Located in the suburbs of Utah, the television series follows a group of mormous women – most of whom have become famous on Tiktok and have become influencers from Momtok – while they manage scandals, confront marital failures and compete, from commercial festive invitations.

But under sensational intrigues is a more complex history on evolving dynamics within a united community.

The group of Mormon mothers has created online content for five years, but say that the concept of reality TV still seems very new to them.

“I heard that people learn to play the game of reality, but it’s not yet us, we are still trying to understand it,” Jessi Ngatikaura told BBC. “So you can see the real us.”

What has started as a hobby has now become a job and women openly speak on the issue of the amount of money they earn from reality TV and brand offers.

“It’s totally our job now, but we have chosen this and we could all move away at any time if we did not want to be part of it,” explains Jessi.

Whitney Leavitt explains that “naturally the dynamics will change when there is more money and family involved and that some people become competitive”, but reassures me that the group is always friends outside the camera.

During the two seasons of the show, Jessi and Whitney had difficult to play scenarios – Whitney is presented as the villain of season one and at the end of season two, it is alleged that Jessi had an affair.

The pair speaks with frankness of the impact so that your life is monitored and commented on by millions of people worldwide.

“It was difficult to reconcile with the fact that we have no control over the story and you never really recover,” says Whitney. “But you have to accept this and let go.”

As the show follows the life of nine friends, it is easy to see how some of them can create more drama for themselves in order to guarantee a screen time, but Jessi insists that this is not the case and nobody “plays but naturally the emotions are not reinforced”.

“We actually record four or five days a week so that we do not know what will make the final assembly.”

Jessi says that his Halloween explosive party was not made by producers and that there is just “naturally so much drama that we don’t need to create more just for the show”.

Given the intensity of theater and filming requests, the presence of strong suites is essential and the two women rent production for its standards of duty of diligence.

“There are always therapists on hand and at first, I said to myself why Taylor and Jen have therapy all the time and now I have five or six hours a week,” admits Jessi. “I found that it was useful even if you don’t go wrong.”

Whitney has also accessed certain sequences of the season one after being presented as the villain of the show.

“It totally sucked to be the villain and I was angry, I had a lot of resentment and I was really sad. There were so many overwhelming emotions for me, but I was proud that instead of fleeing, I stayed and I had these difficult conversations that I did not want to have,” said Whitney.

Whitney was one of the members of the Momtok group that Taylor Frankie Paul revealed was involved in “Soft Swinging”, which she denies and caused a rift in their friendship.

Open discussions on sex, marital affairs and alcohol in the show caused reactions from the Mormone Church.

“When the first trailer came out, there were reactions from the church because they were afraid, but in fact, we show you how we live life and we all live it differently,” said Whitney.

Jessi adds that the Docudrama shows how “we are all normal and everyday girls, not people who wear hats and dam butter as you might think”.

Women say that not only has the church to accept the show, but also helps young women think about their faith differently.

“We have definitely influenced people to question their faith, to dive more deeply or to be more honest on this subject and I received messages from certain people by saying that they join the church because of me,” said Jessi.

Although their religion plays an important role in their lives, they wish to tell me that they are not the face of Mormonism.

“There are Mormons who are always upset about it, but we just show our version and I think it’s stimulating because, hopefully, people will be able to relate to our stories and our struggles.”