Inside Their Faith Journeys: Where The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives Stars Stand With the Church Now

For a show called 'The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,' you probably expect everyone to be all-in on the faith. Not quite. The Hulu series (from the Disney empire) follows a crew of #MomTok influencers who push back on the expected wife/mom script, and the cast runs the full spectrum from devout to fully checked out. On a group stop by Nick Viall's podcast in September 2024, Mayci Neeley summed it up as most of them having Mormon roots — and then, in the same breath, Mikayla Matthews and Jessi (more on her name in a sec) made it clear they are not church members.

One more bit the show leans into: the women jokingly split themselves into two camps — the 'saints' (active Latter-day Saints) and the 'sinners ' (not so much). It is, to put it mildly, a very TV-friendly way of labeling who follows LDS rules and who doesn’t.

Where each woman stands with the LDS Church right now

• Taylor Frankie Paul

  When the series launched in 2024, Taylor said she was trying to reconnect with her faith after the whole 'soft-swinging' mess among her MomTok circle and having a baby outside of marriage. For the record: she has two kids with ex-husband Tate Paul, plus her youngest, Ever, with ex-boyfriend Dakota Mortensen.

  Fast-forward almost two years, and she publicly said she was stepping away from the church. Her post was thoughtful and very Taylor, so it’s worth reading in her own words:

  "I’ll always have love and respect towards it. I’ll even continue to go with my family at times … with that being said, it’s time to detach myself from it. I strongly believe in Christ, God, the bible, the divine. I believe we are loved whether we are praying in a church building or from a bathroom floor at home. I’ve also experienced grace and love from amazing people that aren’t sure what they believe if at all and that’s OK too."

• Demi Engemann

  Demi grew up with one foot in and one foot out — her mom was LDS, her dad wasn’t — which turned faith into a constant push-pull at home. She admits she naturally leans free spirit and tended to push back on strict routine. These days, she’s stepped away from formal LDS practices and focuses on a personal relationship with God instead.

• Jennifer (Jen) Affleck

  Jen was raised in the church and, by her own count, is the most LDS of the main cast. Her mom converted after immigrating to the U.S., and Jen’s faith centers on her connection with God. That said, she did take a detour after high school — left church for a bit, drank, and had sex before marriage — which she describes as a necessary phase to figure out what actually made her happy. In the end, she chose to come back because it makes her feel like a better version of herself.

• Jessi Draper (also referenced as Jessi Ngatikaura)

  If you heard the podcast and thought, Wait, is Jessi Draper the same as Jessi Ngatikaura? — yes, that’s the same cast member being referred to two different ways. Either way, she’s not LDS and is happy to play the rebel on the show. She jokes that she scores a 0 out of 10 on the Mormon scale and leans into the party-girl rep. Her background mirrors Demi’s in one way: her dad wasn’t Mormon, her mom was, and she grew up straddling both worlds.

• Layla Taylor

  Layla converted but calls herself not super active. She tries to make it to church when she can but is upfront that she had sex before marriage and drinks occasionally. She frames it as taking things day by day and keeping her relationship with God personal. On that 2024 podcast, she also mentioned a new boyfriend post-divorce who was active LDS — they ended up breaking up a few months later.

• Mayci Neeley

  Mayci is all-in. She’s active in the church and teaches Primary (that’s the kids program). She also has a current temple recommend — basically the green light that she’s considered worthy to enter an LDS temple.

• Mikayla Matthews

  Mikayla grew up in the church but hasn’t been active for about a decade. She was raised in California, where her home life didn’t exactly match the Sunday best — she remembers her mom, who was a church leader, swearing at them on the way to services. After her parents split, she and her siblings moved with their mom to Utah, but she still never really clicked with a by-the-book lifestyle and drifted away from church activity.

• Whitney Leavitt

  Whitney is a practicing member and one of the cast’s self-described 'saints' — the group’s shorthand for who’s following LDS rules versus who isn’t.

• Miranda McWhorter

  Miranda’s name first popped up around Taylor’s soft-swinging drama. She joins the show in season 2 after divorcing her husband, Chase McWhorter, and stepping away from the faith. On a May 2025 visit to Nick Viall’s podcast, she pointed to communication problems in her marriage and said she was in the middle of a faith crisis while everything was falling apart.

Long story short: despite the title, the cast isn’t a monolith. It’s a mix of believers, skeptics, and people somewhere in between — which, frankly, makes the show a lot more interesting than a tidy 'all LDS, all the time' version would have been.