May 06, 2026 bachelor insider
‘The Bachelorette’s’ Lew Discusses Miranda Hope Connection and the SLOMW ‘Swinging’ Scandal
Spilling the tea.
As Bachelor Nation fans know, the most recent season of “The Bachelorette” is currently on pause. As viewers wait to see what happens, the men from Season 22 have been appearing on the “Bachelor Happy Hour” podcast to exclusively share more of their stories.
This week, Utah native, Lew, joined the podcast and revealed that he knew of Taylor Frankie Paul before “The Bachelorette” because of Miranda Hope from “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.”
While sharing details about growing up in Utah and already being familiar with Taylor, Lew spilled that he personally knows Miranda.
“I knew about her,” he said. “Utah is a bubble, so I know Miranda from ‘Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.’ I met her back in 2014, so I’ve known her for 12 years now. So yeah, I knew about [Taylor]. She’d be in her TikToks and be in her Instagram posts and all of that kind of stuff. So, I knew about Taylor. Did I know her personally? No, didn’t know who she was. But yeah, I mean, if you live in Utah and you don’t know who these girls are, I think you might be crazy. Because it’s talked about everywhere.”
Following up on that, Lew also revealed that he knew about the swinging scandal surrounding SLOMW before going into Night 1 of “The Bachelorette.”
“Yeah, I knew it. Let’s be real, Utah gets a bad rap. And I’m someone who left Utah at 18 years old and I learned a lot about myself.” Lew discussed the pressure people feel growing up in the Mormon church to get married young and have children. He shared that he felt like a lot of people don’t experience much life or different environments before they settle down, leading them to be curious later on.
“Me knowing all this stuff of growing up in Utah, it’s just like being in college,” he said, “And stuff happening. The same things in college but yeah, people are married. Should you do that when you’re married? No! But it’s just like they’re curious because they’ve never been around this stuff before. And you see it all the time, it’s way worse than it used to [be] when I was growing up.”
Lew spilled that although he knew about the scandal, it didn’t sway his opinion on Taylor. “I knew about all this stuff and it’s just like yeah, these people are curious and they want to do some things,” he shared. “Again it goes back to like, were those mistakes? Yeah. But is Taylor a bad person for doing those things? No. And there were other people involved in that. Are they bad people? No. They just were curious and made a mistake.”
Lew continued, “I think Taylor’s beautiful. Taylor is, she’s hot. And I always said this in the house, I said, you know what if Miranda were to ever text me and be like ‘Hey Taylor thinks you’re hot, she’d love to go on a date with you.’ 100%. If you haven’t dated in Utah, you don’t understand. Because there’s a lot of 27-, 28-, 29-, 30-year-old women with two to three kids that are beautiful that you go on dates with here in Utah. There’s just a different way of dating here.”
Hear the rest of Lew’s interview in the full episode of “Bachelor Happy Hour” below!