Just because actress Jeanne Tripplehorn played a modern Mormon woman in Big Love doesn’t mean she’s a fan of the hit reality TV show The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.
“I’ve hung up my Mormon boots,” Tripplehorn, 62, exclusively told Us Weekly while attending The Lowdown premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last month, adding that she has “not” watched the hit Hulu series.
“I was done. I was done. I have a girlfriend who’s obsessed with that show and I’ve never seen it. I didn’t even see [The] Book of Mormon,” she continued, referencing South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s hit Broadway musical. “And I love the South Park guys, but I just couldn’t do it. I was done.”
Tripplehorn — who made her film debut in 1992 as a police psychologist in the hit Basic Instinct — played the lead role in the hit HBO series Big Love, which aired from 2006 to 2011, opposite the late Bill Paxton. (Paxton died in February 2011 of a stroke that he suffered 11 days after heart surgery. He was 61.)
The series followed fundamentalist Bill Henrickson (Paxton), a polygamist living in Utah, as he navigates the complexities of family life when married to multiple wives, played by Tripplehorn, Chloë Sevigny and Ginnifer Goodwin.
The show’s portrayal of the fundamentalist Mormon group the United Effort Brotherhood is reportedly based on the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which officially discontinued and distanced itself from the practice of polygamy in 1890.
Jeanne Tripplehorn Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images
Creators Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer, who also served as executive producers, spent more than two years researching the premise of the series, claiming their intent was to present viewers with a “fair, non-judgmental portrayal of polygamy in America.”
“It’s the combustion, negotiating that mix of feelings that I think keeps an audience coming back for more,” Olsen said.
Fast forward to 2025, and the cast of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives has dominated reality television, nearly breaking the internet when the infamous #MomTok soft-swining scandal broke. In season 2, star (and new Bachelorette) Taylor Frankie Paul shocked fans by revealing new details on the group’s swinging parties, while simultaneously leaving fans guessing with her on-again, off-again romance drama with now-ex Dakota Mortensen.
Miranda McWhorter returned after her divorce and another high-profile soft-swinging scandal, finally clearing the air with Taylor.
Several of Hollywood’s biggest stars have opened up about their ups and downs growing up in the Mormon church. Katherine Heigl’s family converted to the religion after her brother, Jason, died in 1986 of injuries suffered in a car accident. “Both my parents felt a great desire for answers, and they found an answer in […]
“It was nice that she came in because it opened the gates of me being able to speak actual truth about who was involved,“ Taylor told Us. “I haven’t told before what we were up to at these parties, and it’s obviously not something I’m proud of, but it’s freeing at the same time.”
She continued, “We did have sex in the shower with our husbands all together. We also had sex in the same bed at the same time.”
During season 2, Taylor also faced Jenna, the woman who claimed to have slept with Dakota.
“I had no regrets. I’d fixated on it for so long,” Taylor told Us, adding that revisiting these particularly difficult events was “triggering” but that she is learning how to better handle them with the help of therapy.
