As Hulu gears up to launch a second season of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” this spring, the show’s executive producers tease there’s “endless seasons of stories” revolving MomTok left to tell.
“There’s a lot of stories that weren’t covered — It is the ‘secret’ lives of these women,” EP Georgia Berger told TheWrap, adding there’s “so much more” the team had to cut because of timing. “They’re also so young … they all have two to three young kids, and … they are just kind of getting started. There’s hopefully a lot to watch them evolve as well.”
While the series was renewed for 20 additional episodes at Hulu — with filming starting next week — EP Danielle Pistotnik said the team has “endless seasons of stories” in mind after being in nearly constant communication with the women.
News of the renewal came nearly a month after the launch of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” which centers on Mormon creators who, together, created what came to be known as MomTok, as well as their subsequent “soft swinging” scandal that threatened to break up the group. The series stars self-proclaimed founder of MomTok, Taylor Frankie Paul, as well as Demi Engemann, Jen Affleck, Jessi Ngatikaura, Layla Taylor, Mayci Neeley, Mikayla Matthews and Whitney Leavitt.
“The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” scored 409 million viewing minutes in its opening weekend, according to Nielsen, and became Hulu’s most-watched unscripted season premiere this year so far, based on three days of streaming on Hulu and Disney+.
“It’s … impossible to process — our brains can’t process something on that scale,” Pistotnik said of the success, with EP Lisa Filipelli noting Pistotnik knew the series would be a hit from “day one.”
While the scandal made headlines nationally in 2022, Pistotnik had actually meet Mayci Neeley’s husband, Jacob Neeley, while she was on a cruise when she was 13, and he eventually connected Pistotnik with his wife when Mayci was looking for a manager. The women immediately hit it off, and Mayci connected Pistotnik to the rest of the MomTokkers, and the idea for the show was born.
“It was maybe a week of working with all of them when I went to Lisa and I said, ‘we have a show here. These girls are stars,’” Pistotnik said. “The stuff that you see in TikTok is so funny and so good, but it’s like 1% of the depth of these women.”
“There’s a lot there, there’s so much here that’s much deeper than anybody thought,” Filipelli added.
From there, Filipelli assembled a team of producers and recalled there was “interest immediately” from Hulu, enabling the team to “hit the ground running very, very, very quickly,” with Filipelli saying, “I want to say this is one of the quickest things we’ve ever put together.”
While the team was already familiar with Hulu’s unscripted slate, the EPs were also glad the Disney-owned streamer understood the importance of social media for such a creator-driven show. “The marketing of this was going to always be led on the internet and … we really needed someone who understood … [the women] were going to just continue to be who they were online, and that was a benefit and not a hindrance,” Filipelli said.
Beyond the drama — which is sure to resume in full force when the series returns in spring 2025 — the EPs hope to keep shining a light on how the women are pushing boundaries for what is typically expected of Mormon wives and mothers.
“In the L.A. bubble, that might not be hyper-progressive, but if you go to Utah, they’re really breaking the mold,” Filipelli said. “It’s really feminist — what they’re doing — and they’re really … pushing boundaries in a way that’s hard living there, especially with the upbringings they have.”
All episodes of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” are now streaming.
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