What Mormons really think of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives

Infidelity, divorce, even “soft swinging” – not words traditionally associated with Christianity, are just some of the themes in the popular US reality show The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.

The TV series follows a group of female influencers in Utah, home of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), as they deal with friendship problems, romantic problems, and their relationships with their faith.

“These Latter-day Saints are no angels,” last month’s trailer for the third season declared, setting the tone for what was to come. The series became the most-watched unscripted season premiere of 2024 on Hulu and continues to attract millions of viewers worldwide there and on Disney+.

The female cast, who previously gained fame on TikTok under the title “MomTok”, gained a large number of social media followers.

So do Mormons living in the UK think the show fairly reflects their religion? BBC News spoke to some people, many of whom prefer to be referred to as members of Latter-day Saints rather than Mormons.

“We’re normal people,” says podcast producer Ben, who lives near Burnley.

“So there’s still infidelity, there’s still extramarital affairs, probably at a significantly lower percentage because we’re deliberately trying not to do it. But it still happens.”

The show is for appointment viewing for Ben’s wife, Olivia, who he says “loves” it and has put the new season on their calendar so they don’t miss it.

When the first series aired last year, Ben, 27, felt there was “hesitancy” about it in the LDS community. Now, she says, people mostly support the women on the show and don’t say they’re “ashamed” of them, “because we’re not.”

“If you spend a week with a Latter-day Saint family in the UK, it will probably be pretty boring and average,” he says.

Ben and Olivia are among approximately 185,000 LDS members in the UK. The church was founded in the United States in 1830 by Joseph Smith, who said he received a revelation from God and translated it as the Book of Mormon.

LDS members believe that the Book, like the Bible, is the word of God. Unlike other branches of Christianity, members do not believe that Jesus himself is God but that they are separate entities.

They are perhaps best known for their missionary tradition, in which thousands of young Mormons are sent by the LDS to different parts of the world each year to recruit others to the religion.

In 1837 the first missionaries of the newly formed LDS arrived in the United Kingdom in Preston, Lancashire, now home to the largest Mormon temple in Europe. Earlier this year, Plans to expand the temple where Ben and Olivia sometimes worship have been approved by councilors.

Traci, 57, from Buckinghamshire, told BBC News that after growing up LDS, she fell away from the faith when her mother died at the age of 17. Nearly ten years later, the woman, who is pregnant with twins, says she prays every night, is afraid and asks for help. When their son was born and the missionaries knocked on the door, he says he “felt the presence of the Holy Spirit.”

He has been an active member of the LDS ever since; This means complying with a health code that prohibits drinking tea, coffee and alcohol, and consuming less meat, among other things.

Traci, a psychotherapist living in Olney, decided not to watch The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, but says from what she has been told, “it is not representative of the women” she knows in the LDS. “That’s not the way they live their lives.”

He says he understands that “people are sometimes curious about the members of our church, they want to know what makes us tick,” but he adds, “I worry sometimes, how are we represented? How do you see us?”

One of the main themes of the series is the pressure women feel in their family lives. Jessi, a woman whose story on the show revolves around an emotional affair, says avoiding dealing with problems in her marriage contributes to infidelity and accuses Utah’s Mormonism of creating “too much pressure to have the perfect relationship, the perfect family, and everything to be great.”

Back in the UK, we also spoke to Ben and Olivia’s friend Ashlyn, who went to university in Utah and now lives in Burnley with her husband Joe and their nine-month-old son.

He says the show is “a really accurate representation of what the church in Utah looks like and what Utah looks like culturally where faith meets cultural practices.”

Ashlyn, 25, adds that the large number of Mormons there means the pressure to have a family comes not just from the Church but from “everyone you interact with.”

“This pressure is very real. Many of us call it the Utah bubble.”

But he says the situation is not the same in England. He describes the show’s US cast as “probably more culturally members” of the LDS rather than religious believers.

Ashlyn describes her experiences with LDS as encouraging rather than oppressive. “Some people find a lot of the commandments and what people might call ‘rules’ very restrictive, and it almost seems like all these doors are keeping me in,” says Ashlyn, “whereas for us it’s seen as a little bit more security. It helps guide us in the right direction.”

He says the so-called “soft swing” – one of the show’s scandals – would “certainly” be “discouraged” by the Church.

The stunning Taylor Frankie Paul was central to the storyline in series one of the show; She described herself and her then-husband as being sexually intimate with two other couples at various parties – but stopping short of “going all the way”.

In LDS, “we have something called the law of chastity that says we really have to protect sexual relationships in our marriages,” Ashlyn explains.

He says his lifestyle at Burnley is “very family-centred, very healthy, trying to focus on going to church on Sundays, serving others, being a really good example to others and helping the community.”

Ashlyn adds, “I don’t think Secret Lives of Mormon Women would be as entertaining if it was really just about them bringing cookies to their neighbors and living healthy family lives.”

Another theme in the show focuses on Layla, a black member of the LDS who stopped attending because she said the Church no longer “resonated” with her as a black person, converted to LDS, and moved to Utah when she was 16.

“There’s an old scripture in the Book of Mormon that says black skin is a curse. This is something I wasn’t aware of when I first converted, but I am aware of now,” he says in the latest series.

In 2013, LDS “rejected” these teachings and now believes that “everyone is an equal child of God, regardless of race.”

BBC News spoke to Naomi, who is the ‘Young Women President’ at her local congregation in London; This means he looks after girls between the ages of 12 and 18 in his area. She told us that as a “black woman,” she hopes children “can see me and my example and know what’s possible.”

Naomi said she “hasn’t had any negative experiences” in the Church based on her race and that the teachings are “condemning.”

LDS members in Britain we spoke to had mixed views on whether The Secret Lives of Mormon Women represented their way of life; most agreed that parts of it were exaggerated depictions.

Ahead of the show’s first series last year, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the UK released a statement titled “When entertainment media distorts faith.”

Although he did not name the show, he said: “Some recent productions depict lifestyles and practices that are clearly inconsistent with the teachings of the Church.

“We understand the admiration of some in the media for the Church, but we regret that portrayals often rely on sensationalism and inaccuracies that do not fairly or fully reflect the lives of our Church members or the sacred beliefs they hold dear.”

As a TV producer who has worked on reality shows, Naomi knows all too well that the saying “things will be cranked up, produced to achieve the desired effect” is a classic of the genre.

“I’m very aware of that.”