Bachelor alum Ashley Iaconetti has officially entered a new realm of reality television as part of the cast of The Real Housewives of Rhode Island, but that definitely doesn’t mean she’s leaving the drama of Bachelor Nation behind. As her new show premiered on the 2026 TV schedule last week, Iaconetti shared some strong opinions on why Taylor Frankie Paul never should have been named lead of The Bachelorette.
Lots of Bachelor Nation vets have weighed in over the past couple of weeks, after video from Taylor Frankie Paul’s domestic violence arrest in 2023 went viral, prompting ABC to pull The Bachelorette Season 22 from their lineup. Ashley Iaconetti has talked at length about the topic on her Almost Famous podcast and told Variety the situation with Paul probably shouldn’t have even gotten as far as it did. She said:
I recorded an hour-long podcast on this today, and it’s such a nuanced thing. Overall, it’s a good thing that they didn’t go forth with the season. That was a decision that should have been made more carefully earlier on.
The Bachelorette definitely took a risk when recruiting the star of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives (streaming with a Hulu subscription) to be its lead. While investigations into two more domestic violence incidents have since come to light between Taylor Frankie Paul and Dakota Mortensen — one from 2024 and one from February of this year — Paul’s 2023 arrest was well-known, with footage even being shown in the SLOMW premiere.
Article continues belowThe video of Taylor Frankie Paul throwing metal chairs at her ex-boyfriend — one of which reportedly hit her then-5-year-old daughter — may be new, but as Ashley Iaconetti pointed out, Paul hadn’t shied away from talking about the incident in the past. The RHORI star said:
We knew very much in detail, based on a lot of the interviews that she’s given, exactly what happened in the video and what led to the arrest. You guys did have her on a TV show for four seasons… It’s an absolutely terrible, terrible video, and the child being there is just awful.
Even without the viral video, the events of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives Season 4, which showed Taylor Frankie Paul in the weeks leading up to filming The Bachelorette, did not depict a woman who was ready to find love and get engaged. Ashley Iaconetti continued:
She probably should not have been decided to be The Bachelorette. That wasn’t an appropriate role for her to fill, and probably was not something that she was mentally, emotionally ready to take on for many reasons — the fact that she was so intertwined with Dakota going into it being one of them. So many things to say.
In the SLOMW Season 4 finale, it was learned TFP and Dakota Mortensen slept together the night before she left for Los Angeles to film. Taylor Frankie Paul even addressed her “toxic” relationship in interviews leading up to the season, saying she saw The Bachelorette as her opportunity to escape an unhealthy cycle.
As the new Housewife suggested, that’s not a great place to start if you’re the Bachelorette, and one of several reasons she thinks Taylor Frankie Paul wasn’t the right choice even before that viral video.
It remains to be seen whether or not we ever see that already-filmed Bachelorette season — Ashley Iaconetti had a suggestion for how to release it — but either way, you can catch Iaconetti on her new show, with The Real Housewives of Rhode Island at 9 p.m. ET Sundays on Bravo and streaming the next day with a Peacock subscription.
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