Taylor Frankie Paul’s family was initially hesitant about watching her search for love on The Bachelorette.
“We are very excited,” Taylor’s mom, Liann May, says in Us Weekly’s exclusive first look of her appearance on Kia Veinneau’s “Busy Mom Talk” podcast. “Obviously, we have our reservations just because Bachelors and Bachelorettes go and date people within so many weeks. To find true love is a little difficult in the time frame that they’re given, but people do fall in love and end up together.”
ABC announced earlier this month that the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star, 31, will be the next Bachelorette for its 22nd season.
“I think with her, I think it’s just a little different because she has three kids,” Liann tells podcast host Kia. “She’s a mom, [and] it’s gonna be a whole different story line as a divorced mom.”
Taylor shares daughter Indy, 7, and son Ocean, 4, with ex-husband Tate Paul as well as son Ever, 17 months, with ex-boyfriend Dakota Mortensen.
“A lot of people can relate to her, but at the same time, it’s, like, what are the men going on the show to really find?” Liann adds on the podcast. “True love? I don’t know. We’re excited, but we question all the men that are going to be on it. Are they doing it for fame or doing it for them? That kind of scares me because I have three grandkids, and I get it. There’s probably a lot of men who don’t want to jump into a relationship [with someone who] has three kids.”
Liann is also nervous to see how Taylor handles being away from her three children while the show is in production. (The Bachelorette usually films at the Bachelor Mansion in California before heading to various international destinations, while Taylor primarily resides in Utah.)
“It’s going to be interesting because the kids are in school. The baby is going with her,” Liann says, referring to Taylor’s youngest son, Ever. “He gets to go with her. She’s obviously not going to be watching him, but it’s going to be good to see his mom on the daily, whether it’s for an hour to two hours a day. At least he gets something then [if he didn’t] see her that whole time.”
According to Liann, Taylor also might end up flying back and forth from California to Utah to see Indy and Ocean.
“We’ll see how the schedule goes,” Liann speculates. “Or we’ll fly them there. We’re going to make it work, and Bachelor is being really cool about letting her bring her kids ’cause that was [her] stipulation, like, ‘Hey, I need to see my kids.’ Usually you don’t.”
Just as Liann hopes her daughter ultimately finds The One on The Bachelorette, so does Taylor herself.
“That’s the goal here, and as my mom likes to say, I do fall in love quickly, and that’s also the reason I did it,” Taylor exclusively told Us earlier this month of possibly getting engaged in the finale. “I always call myself a lover girl because I fall for people and I have done that in the past. Obviously, I got married young, and the first guy I dated was my second baby daddy — so it was just very quick.”
Taylor Frankie Paul wants any of her potential The Bachelorette suitors to know that she’s a proud single mother. “Me when the men step out of the limo,” Taylor, 31, wrote on a Thursday, September 18, Instagram video of herself dancing in a sports bra and leggings. In the clip, Taylor lip-synched to Huda Mustafa’s […]
She added, “This time, it’s going to be really cool because … I’m about to date, you know, 20 [or] 30 guys, and I’ve never done that before. I’m going to take my time, I’m going to kind of, like, get to know people. Maybe I learned things I didn’t like or do like that I didn’t even know. So I think this is gonna be really good for the long-term effect.”
Taylor’s season of The Bachelorette is set to premiere in 2026.
