Disney Entertainment Television has pulled the plug on its latest season of “The Bachelorette” — just days before it was supposed to debut.
ABC — whose parent company is Disney — will be without its popular reality television show this season after an ugly video surfaced, per Fox News.
To wit, “The Bachelorette” is a dating and relationship reality show where the main bachelorette will go on a variety of dates before eventually choosing a “winner,” which should ostensibly be “true love.” The newest season was supposed to air on Sunday.
That won’t be happening anymore.
This now-cancelled season’s bachelorette was slated to be Taylor Frankie Paul, something of a reality television veteran after her appearances on “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.”
Her general future in reality television, however, may be in jeopardy after TMZ published an alarming video that showed Paul repeatedly assaulting her ex-boyfriend, Dakota Mortenson.
The video stemmed from a 2023 incident that preceded Paul and Mortenson splitting, as well as the former pleading guilty to aggravated assault.
(You can watch the video for yourself on TMZ, but be warned that it’s disturbing.)
In the video, Paul is seen kicking and choking Mortenson. At one point, she hurls barstools at him and allegedly struck her daughter in the rampage.
Throughout the unsettling video, Mortenson could be heard repeatedly pleading.
“This is called physical abuse,” Mortenson said mid-chokehold, according to Fox News transcripts. “See Taylor, this is all you do. It’s the only thing you know how to do is hurt me. Do you think this is okay? It’s not okay.”
Mortenson also tried to appeal to the mother in Paul, at one point pleading with her, “Your daughter is right here.”
In another instance, shortly after throwing a barstool, a child could be heard yelling for “mommy.”
“Help your daughter, stop screaming at me,” he told her.
Later, Mortenson would accuse Paul of striking her daughter with a chair.
Paul has three children: a daughter and son from a prior marriage, and a younger son with Mortenson.
In a sad bit of fallout from this scandal, that younger son won’t be seeing his mother for a bit, as People magazine is reporting that Mortenson was granted temporary custody of the boy amid an ongoing “domestic assault investigation” into the parents.
The protective order said that “no parent time is allowed until the scheduled hearing,” which is slated for April 7.
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