Reality TV was at its best in 2024, and Us has just one request going into the new year: more Mormons, please.
Hulu’s The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives debuted with a bang in September, joining Dancing With the Stars and The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City in representing Utah on the small screen. Viewers were quickly captivated by the MomTok influencers featured on The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, including Taylor Frankie Paul, who previously sparked interest with her soft swinging scandal long before cameras started rolling on the Hulu series.
“We’re not all swingers,” costar Whitney Leavitt exclusively told Us Weekly in September, joking that she “just took the clout” from Taylor’s scandal despite not being directly involved.
Fellow MomTok personality Mayci Neely doubled down on the swinger denial but noted that there’s more to Mormon culture than meets the eye. “You can be Mormon and wear a crop top and leggings as well,” she said. ”You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to be the stereotypical Mormon that people think we’re all supposed to be.”
The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives certainly showed a different side of women in Salt Lake City — but it’s not the only reality show putting the LDS lifestyle front and center. Scroll down for a look at how Mormons stole the TV spotlight in 2024:
The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City
RHOSLC has brought its A-game since the beginning, but something shifted at the end of season 4. The bombshell finale aired in January and showed what might go down in history as the Housewives dinner to end all dinners. Heather Gay designed her very own Bermuda Triangle as the women wrapped up their tropical vacation with a dramatic confrontation. “Receipts, proof, timelines, screenshots. F—ing everything” was brought to the table, revealing Monica Garcia was one of the masterminds behind the social media account Reality Von Tease.
The drama continued in a three-part reunion special — which even included a Mean Girls-inspired Burn Book — and kept Us on the edge of our seats before the show returned for season 5 in September. Monica didn’t come back with her fellow Housewives, but a few new faces joined the ranks: Bronwyn Newport and Britani Bateman.
The stakes have been higher than ever throughout season 5 — and even the husbands are getting involved in fighting their spouses’ battles. Heather gave Us some exclusive insight into how the season ends, teasing in December that the finale is “better than Bermuda.” Sign Us up.
The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives
Hulu introduced Us to MomTok in September, and our lives have never been the same. This show has everything — TikTok dances, soft swinging, a devout Mormon threatening to divorce his wife if she goes to a Chippendales performance. One Mormon influencer considers taking a sponsorship deal for a vibrator, while another admits to trying ketamine therapy. And yes, the “Utah curls” are basically a character in and of themselves.
The series was quickly renewed for a second season and caught the attention of some other famous Mormons. “If you’re wondering what the blue coat [from the opening credits] is in the Mormon Church, there’s literally nothing that that has to do with,” Lindsay Arnold, a DWTS pro from Utah, joked in a September TikTok video sharing her reaction to the reality show.
Sister Wives star Janelle Brown, who was also born into a Mormon family, told Us in October that she did a “deep dive” into the lore of the Hulu series. “The Mormons I know, they’re so conservative,” she explained to Us. “They’re very salt of the earth, very traditional. These ladies are not traditional.”
Dancing With the Stars
Mormons have always had a prominent presence on the ABC ballroom dance competition, but the Utah connection was even more powerful during season 33, which began in September. Two months later, there were still eight dancers representing Utah on both the pro and troupe levels. “Utah gang in THE ballroom❤️🔥,” troupe member Stephani Sosa captioned a TikTok video in November alongside her brother Ezra Sosa and more DWTS pros, including Jenna Johnson, Rylee Arnold and Brandon Armstrong.
Us previously dug into why there are so many DWTS pros with Mormon backgrounds, and for Armstrong, the answer is simple. “There’s nothing else to do,” he joked during an October podcast interview. “What else do you do? You talk about our biggest cities, like Salt Lake, ain’t nothing there. … You play sports, go to school, date super young — these guys get married when they’re 19, 20 years old — and then you dance.”
Sold on SLC
The Selling Sunset-esque reality show is new to Bravo’s rotation, having just premiered in December, but it’s already packing a punch. The first episode alone featured a cameo from RHOSLC star Lisa Barlow (complete with a joke about swingers) and a fight between colleagues about who does or doesn’t respect Mormons enough. While the world of real estate gets cutthroat in Salt Lake City, the tension is offset by footage of agents reading scripture with their kids and the network’s classic tongue-in-cheek editing. In some ways, Sold on SLC could even qualify as educational programming — who knew Mormon clients won’t show their homes to potential buyers on Sundays?
How Sold on SLC stacks up against other Mormon-inspired heavy hitters remains to be seen, but there’s definitely enough drama to keep Us tuning in.
