Bustle Exclusive
The Mormon Wives: OC Cast Is Fine “Not Having DadTok” On Their Show
Jen Affleck and Ashleigh Pease open up about their new series and focusing on the ladies.
The show was never called The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives... & Their Guys. But on Hulu’s hit reality series about headline-making Mormons, the entity known as #DadTok has definitely asserted its presence — often to the frustration of viewers.
As the franchise expands with its first spinoff, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Orange County (streaming Nov. 12), some fans may be wary of a new DadTok contingent taking shape. But while teasers confirm that dads do appear in the new show, it sounds like they won’t be occupying an outsized number of storylines.
“It’s the overall consensus — we’re very good with not having DadTok,” Ashleigh Pease tells Bustle, with castmate Jen Affleck adding: “We’re like, Let’s just leave them out of this! It’s about us.”
Indeed, for fans who were also a little bit over DadTok, Orange County might finally be striking the right balance. “I think a bunch of our husbands are so excited to support us in this next stage of whatever we’re doing,” Pease says, adding that she’s not sure if many of the dads are “wanting to jump into anything like that.”
Affleck agrees, “I don’t even think the men are really interested — the majority of them, at least.”
After viewers pointed out that the dads were featured heavily in the Utah-based Mormon Wives Season 4, executive producer Jeff Jenkins, who works across both shows, told The Wrap, “DadTok is not the primary reason why we document this group. This is about women.” While highlighting the dads was the show’s way of exploring a “microcosm of a greater dynamic” of shifting gender roles, he reiterated that the Mormon Wives men are “always supporting cast members.”
More recently, Jordan Ngatikaura — one of the most prominent members of Utah’s so-called DadTok, who is divorcing Jessi Draper — gave Reality Shrine an update on his on-screen posse. “DadTok is officially cancelled. Hulu made d*mn sure of that,” he said. “They really pushed for that and then realized that the audience didn’t want that. So, we’re disbanded. We no longer represent ourselves as DadTok or anything.”
As a new chapter of the franchise begins, Orange County might have learned from its mothership that fans’ favorite stories still center on, well, the mothers.
