What Mormons Really Think about The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives

Infidelity, divorce, even “soft-swinging”: these are not words traditionally associated with Christianity, but just some of the themes of the hit American reality show The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.

The television series follows a group of influential women in Utah, the home of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), as they deal with friendship breakups, romantic problems, and their relationship with their faith.

“These Latter-day Saints are not angels,” declared last month’s trailer for season three, setting the tone for what was to come. The show became the most-watched unscripted season premiere of 2024 on Hulu and continues to attract millions of viewers around the world there and on Disney+.

And the all-female cast, who previously gained notoriety on TikTok under their “MomTok” tagline, have gained dozens of followers on social media.

But do Mormons living in the UK believe the show offers a fair representation of their religion? BBC News has spoken to some, many of whom prefer to be called members of the Latter-day Saints rather than Mormons.

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

“So there’s still infidelity, there’s still extramarital affairs, probably at a significantly lower percentage because we intentionally try not to do that. But those things still happen.”

The show is a date night for Ben’s wife, Olivia, who he says “loves it” as he put the new season on her calendar so she wouldn’t miss it.

When the first series aired last year, Ben, 27, feels there was “hesitation” in the LDS community about it. Now, she says most people support the women on the show and wouldn’t say they’re “embarrassed” for them, “because we’re not.”

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

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

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

They are perhaps best known for their missionary tradition, where each year the LDS send thousands of young Mormons to different places around the world to recruit others to the religion.

In 1837, the first missionaries of the newly founded LDS arrived in the United Kingdom in Preston, Lancashire, which is now home to the largest Mormon temple in Europe. Earlier this year, councilors approved plans to expand the temple, where Ben and Olivia sometimes worship.

In Buckinghamshire, Traci, 57, tells BBC News that after growing up in the LDS Church, she fell away from the faith at age 17 when her mother died. About a decade later, pregnant with twins, she says she prayed every night, scared and asking for help. When her children were born and the missionaries knocked on her door, she says she “felt the presence of the Holy Spirit.”

Since then, he has been a practicing member of the LDS Church, which, among other things, means complying with a health code that prohibits drinking tea, coffee and alcohol, and eating meat in moderation.

Traci, an Olney-based psychotherapist, decided not to watch The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, but from what she was told about it, she says it’s “not representative of the women” she knows in the LDS. “It’s not the way they live their life.”

She says she understands that “sometimes people are curious about our church members, they want to know what makes us tick,” but adds, “Sometimes I worry: How do they represent us? How do they see us?”

One of the main themes of the television show is the pressure that women feel in their family life. Jessi, a woman on the show whose story revolves around an emotional affair she had, says that avoiding dealing with problems in her marriage contributed to the infidelity and blamed Utah Mormonism for creating “a lot of pressure to have the perfect relationship, the perfect family and everything is 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.

She calls the show “a really accurate representation of the church in Utah and what Utah looks like culturally, where beliefs meet cultural practices.”

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

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

But she says it’s not the same in the UK. She describes the show’s American cast as “probably more culturally members” of the LDS, rather than devout believers.

Ashlyn describes her experiences with LDS as encouraging, rather than stressful. “Some people see a lot of the commandments, and what people would call ‘rules,’ as very limiting and almost like there are all these doors holding me back,” Ashlyn says, “whereas for us, it’s seen a little more as security. It helps direct us on the right path.”

And so-called “soft swinging,” one of the show’s scandals, would “definitely” be “discouraged” by the Church, he says.

Influencer Taylor Frankie Paul was at the center of the story in the show’s first season, when she described her and her then-husband as being sexually intimate, but not “going all the way,” with two other couples at various parties.

Ashlyn explains how in the LDS “we have something called the law of chastity that says we really have to save sexual relationships within our marriages.”

She says her lifestyle in Burnley is “very family-centered, very healthy, trying to focus on going to church on Sundays, serving others, being a very good example to others and helping out in the community.”

Ashlyn adds, “I don’t think it would be as entertaining if The Secret Life of Mormon Wives was actually just them bringing cookies to their neighbors and living a very healthy family life.”

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

“There is an ancient scripture in the Book of Mormon that says black skin is a curse. It’s something I’m aware of now that I didn’t know when I was first converted,” he says in the latest series.

In 2013, the LDS “disavowed” those teachings and now believe that “all are equal children of God, regardless of race.”

BBC News spoke to Naomi, a ‘Young Women President’ at her local congregation in London, meaning she looks after girls aged 12-18 in her area. She told us that, as a “black woman,” she hopes children “can see me and my example and know what is possible.”

Naomi says she has not “had any negative experiences” in the Church because of her race, and says the teachings “have been denounced.”

Members of the LDS Church in Britain we spoke to had mixed opinions about whether The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives represents their way of life, with most agreeing that some parts were exaggerated depictions.

Ahead of the first series of the show last year, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the UK issued a statement titled “When Entertainment Media Distorts the Faith.”

While he did not name the show, he said: “Several recent productions depict lifestyles and practices blatantly inconsistent with Church teachings.

“We understand the fascination some media outlets have with the Church, but we regret that depictions are often based on sensationalism and inaccuracies that do not fairly and completely reflect the lives of our Church members or the sacred beliefs they hold dear.”

Naomi, a television producer who works on reality shows, knows very well that it is a classic of the genre that “things are going to be enhanced, things are going to be produced to achieve the desired effect.”

“I’m very aware of that.”