Lifestyle
Haider Ackermann Leads Tom Ford Into a New Era
One evening in late January, Haider Ackermann, the new designer at Tom Ford, was tucked into a velvet banquette at La Reserve, the discreet, tryst-worthy hotel not far from the Élysée Palace in Paris. He was doing his best impression of Tom Ford, the man.
“Hello, Haider,” Mr. Ackermann purred, his voice dropping an octave and taking on a sultry tone. He was acting out a phone call he had received. “It’s Tom.” He paused to take a breath, as if he were tasting the air. “Call me,” he said, making it sound like “come here.”
Then, his voice back to normal, he added, “Of course I did.”
That was about eight months ago. It turned out Mr. Ford, who had sold the company that bears his name to Estée Lauder in 2022, had a proposition for Mr. Ackermann. After only a year, the new owners — Lauder and Ermenegildo Zegna — had decided that Mr. Ford’s immediate successor, Peter Hawkings, was not the right man for the brand.
To replace him, they had only one name on their list, “and that name was me,” Mr. Ackermann said. Though he had recently taken a job as creative director of the outdoor company Canada Goose and was in the midst of negotiations to become the designer of a big French fashion house, Mr. Ackermann started fantasizing about Tom Ford.
“I was immediately thinking about what I should do,” he said. “What I would do.”
Now, after multiple conversations with Mr. Ford, Mr. Ackermann is on the verge of introducing a new Tom Ford collection for men and women. The goal is to do what Mr. Hawkings could not and redefine Tom Ford for the post-Tom Ford era.
Mr. Ackermann has moved the fashion show to Paris from Milan and is in the process of moving the company headquarters from London. He has teased his new look on his friend Timothée Chalamet, who wore custom Tom Ford by Haider Ackermann on the red carpet at the Golden Globes in January: a skinny, rhinestone-speckled black suit with a sky blue polka-dot silk scarf slung around his neck. But he is still trying to find “the thread between what I call sensuality and what Mr. Ford called sexuality,” he said.
“The exercise is more difficult than I thought it would be,” Mr. Ackermann said, noting that he had not made a knee-length pencil skirt, a Tom Ford signature, in his entire career. But, he went on, “the man, the woman, they are not strangers to me. I know we will get together, but it takes time.”
Especially because it turns out this particular relationship is kind of a throuple.
The Ghost in the Machine
“The complexity of this story is that the house of Tom Ford is Mr. Ford,” Mr. Ackermann said. “There’s no other ambassador than Mr. Ford.” Tom Ford is his ghost in the machine.
Plenty of designers have taken over houses that still bear the names of the designers who founded them: Dior, Chanel, Givenchy, Gucci, Saint Laurent — these were all real people. That’s where the idea of brand “DNA” originates.
But at a certain point, a brand can become so divorced from its founder that the name is just an abstraction. Once enough other designers have inherited the title, it’s hard to remember that clients were once loyal to a specific silhouette or design. That opens up the possibility for new creative directors to make the house their own.
A house like Tom Ford is somewhat different. That’s because it’s only 20 years old, and, whatever his official status, Mr. Ford still seems very much around.
Founded by Mr. Ford and his business partner, Domenico De Sole, in 2005, Tom Ford-the-brand was a kind of test case: Would Mr. Ford, who had become a celebrity by remaking Gucci and creating Gucci Group (the seed of the conglomerate that eventually became Kering) before leaving in 2004 to make movies, have enough name recognition to build a label from scratch on the mere power of his stubbly, unbuttoned-shirt appeal?
The partners started by licensing fragrance (to Lauder), then eyewear and then expanded into men’s wear (with Zegna) and women’s wear. But while the beauty line became a smash hit, and the suiting did fine, the women’s line always seemed more of a red-carpet indulgence than an actual business.
Nevertheless, just over two years ago, after Mr. Ford’s husband died and he decided to focus on filmmaking (again), Estée Lauder paid $2.8 billion to buy the house, enlisting Zegna to handle the fashion side. Mr. Hawkings, who had worked with Mr. Ford for 25 years, was named designer. He was, Mr. Ford said in an Instagram post, “the perfect creative director.”
It did not take long, however, before rumor had it that Mr. Ford was not happy with comments Mr. Hawkings had made that seemed critical. The reception of Mr. Hawkings’s first collections was mixed, and Mr. Ford, in what seemed like a very public repudiation, wore Saint Laurent to last year’s Met Gala. By July, Mr. Hawkings was out. Soon after, Mr. Ford was on the phone with Mr. Ackermann.
“Mr. Ford and I, we had always been flirting with each other professionally,” Mr. Ackermann said. When Mr. Ackermann was fired from a previous job as creative director of Berluti in a designer reshuffle, Mr. Ford “wrote me such a beautiful letter,” Mr. Ackermann said. “Karl Lagerfeld was the first, and he was the second. It was so moving.”
Haider and the Big Ts
Mr. Ackermann, 52, is something of a fashion designer’s designer. A Colombian orphan who was adopted by a French couple, he spent his childhood moving around the world with his cartographer father before his parents settled in the Netherlands. He attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp but was kicked out before graduation. (If he did not feel he had anything to say to a teacher, he said, he just did not go to class.) He started his own namesake label in 2003.
His work was characterized by an extraordinary facility with color and decadent romance; he calls his aesthetic “bohemian dreamer.” At one point, Mr. Lagerfeld was enchanted enough to suggest that Mr. Ackermann succeed him at Chanel.
He spent two years at Berluti, but after a dispute with his backer, he lost control of his label and name. Though he has since regained ownership of that name, he was off the runway for a time, save for a much lauded one-off stint as a guest designer for Jean Paul Gaultier couture and the occasional custom order from his famous friends, Mr. Chalamet (whom he has been dressing since 2017) and Tilda Swinton. He calls them “the big Ts.”
As Ms. Swinton tells it, they met in 2004. He sent her a gown for the Cannes Film Festival, but he did not show up for the fittings because he had promised his partner at the time a trip to India. Later, he said, she called and invited him for a patisserie and asked him why he had not been there, and they bonded over the idea of putting relationships over business. She has worn his designs ever since, and they speak, she said, “several times a week.”
“He’s a proper romantic and proper punk, which is the best combination,” Ms. Swinton said, describing his work as “ancient and supersonic at the same time.”
Daphne Guinness, the artist and collector, said Mr. Ackermann was “a Saint Laurent for the space age.” At this point, she calculated that she had about 40 Ackermann pieces in her wardrobe, including the first four looks of his Gaultier couture collection.
During his time away from the runway, Mr. Ackermann did a collaboration with Fila. Then Canada Goose got in touch. “It was very interesting,” he said, going from “being this very niche designer to talking to thousands of people. I had never worn a parka before. Now, I love it. But somebody told me recently that it made my legs look very short.”
Mr. Ackermann has been converted to the joys of camping instead of clubbing. He is a famously good dancer — “incredible,” Ms. Swinton said — and his favorite haunt used to be a club in Rotterdam where, he said, “I was the only boy who didn’t have a shaved hair.” His last summer vacation, however, was spent in a tent in British Columbia. It’s good for perspective.
That’s when he realized that the “massive failure” of losing his own brand “brought me to today, where I understand what I do and why I’m doing it.”
Serving the House
It also brought him to Tom Ford. Gildo Zegna, the chief executive of the Ermenegildo Zegna Group (which also owns Zegna and Thom Browne), described meeting Mr. Ackermann in Paris. “We clicked,” Mr. Zegna said. “We had two long days together, walking around, sitting in the garden, and the social part, the friendly part, was as important as the business part.”
Well, that and the fact that, Mr. Zegna said, “he had the support of Tom Ford, which was very important.”
Which raises the question of what Mr. Ford was doing pulling the strings of a brand he supposedly had nothing to do with. Though Mr. De Sole is on the board of Zegna, Mr. Ford has had no official role in the company since the sale. He declined to comment for this piece, and Mr. Zegna was quick to de-emphasize his role, even as he acknowledged that Mr. Ackermann was Mr. Ford’s idea. But it further raises the stakes for Mr. Ackermann.
“The moment that you work for a house, you have to know your place,” Mr. Ackermann said. “It’s not about you. It’s about you at the service of the house.”
“I didn’t think it was going to be easy to take the role, knowing that somebody has been kicked out in a violent way,” he continued, referring to the departure of Mr. Hawkings. “I’ve been through it. I know what rejection can feel like.”
He is very careful to use the honorific “Mr.” when he speaks of Mr. Ford. (He calls him Tom when they meet in person, he said.) Even as he added: “If people are expecting hot sex, no, you will not see it from me. I don’t have that talent, to be very provocative or very avant-garde. I have different codes. I’m not there to continue exactly the past.”
No More Hot Sex
“We had an appointment in London for lunch one time,” Mr. Ackermann said, describing a meeting with Mr. Ford when they were in the wooing stages. “I arrived earlier, and when he entered the restaurant, he didn’t see me standing in the corner, so I could just observe him. The way he entered the room — the security, the audacity he had in his posture — everyone in the room was looking. It intrigued me. Perhaps, coming from a very Catholic background, I could not be this person. But perhaps, somewhere deep inside, I would like to be this person. To have that kind of freedom.”
That, Mr. Ackermann said, is what his Tom Ford man represents. As for the woman: “I don’t believe in big words like glamour and power. The power of women is not big shoulders. The power of women is what she’s got inside her, the fragility that she eventually wants to show.”
It was two weeks before the Paris show, and he was sitting in his atelier with a vase of white calla lilies behind him. “They are a little more pure than Black Orchid,” he said, referring to one of Mr. Ford’s signature perfumes. “But I think still poisonous and dangerous.” He had decided that his connection to the brand was more about his own memories than any specific silhouette.
“Like in 2012, I went to the Met Gala,” he said. “I was really nervous. I was like, ‘Oh my God, what am I going to wear?’ I’m too shy. But Anna Wintour said: ‘You’ve got no choice. You have to come.’”
So Mr. Ackermann went to a Tom Ford shop and bought a black suit with black dots. And when he was on the Met red carpet, he bumped into Mr. Ford. “He looked at me and said, ‘Oh, you look so smart,’” Mr. Ackermann said. “I was so happy. Then I realized he was not looking at me. He was looking at his suit. So obviously, you will see black dots in the show.”
There will also be knee-length skirts, though Mr. Ackermann was still “trying to find the right line that doesn’t feel too vulgar or too much secretary. I’m challenging myself for sure.”
Mr. Zegna said he believed growth would come for women’s wear, accessories and the European business. Because of the Hawkings issue, the owners are a year behind in their strategic plan. The turnaround has to happen “fast,” he said. “We have not invested to not get returns.”
That’s partly why Mr. Ackermann moved the show to Paris: to signal an ambition to compete at the highest level. Also, he said, “I don’t think Mr. Ford had the easiest time in Paris,” a reference to the period when Mr. Ford appointed himself head of Saint Laurent, to the public criticism of Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint Laurent.
“For me, it was a way to say thank you for trusting me, giving me the honor to continue your story,” Mr. Ackermann said. “I want the world to look at Tom Ford in Paris. The name deserves it, and you deserve it.”
Only 200 people are invited to the show, including Mr. Ford and Mr. De Sole. “I wanted to have something intimate,” Mr. Ackermann said. “I believe that’s what luxury is. It shouldn’t be accessible to everything and everyone. I think the world needs less of a circus. I want it to feel rich, and I want it to feel noble, but I also want it to be quiet. To command attention without screaming.”
Mr. Ackermann has scattered the collection with Easter eggs for Mr. Ford — “things,” he said, “where he will be the only one to see it.”
“If it goes wrong, it goes wrong,” he continued. “But I have no fear. If, after the 5th of March at 7:30, Mr. Ford can say, ‘I made the right choice,’ if I make Mr. Zegna and Mr. Lauder proud, then, OK. Let’s go for it. I’m going to a secret place with the team members and my friends, and we’re going to dance the hell out of it.”
Cesar Chavez attends a Labour Party press conference in the United Kingdon on September 17, 1974.
Les Lee/Getty Images/Hulton Archive
hide caption
toggle caption
Les Lee/Getty Images/Hulton Archive
A version of this essay first appeared in the Up First newsletter. Subscribe here so you don’t miss the next one. You’ll get the news you need to start your day, plus a little fun every weekday and Sundays.
My phone kept going off on Wednesday afternoon with texts from different friends — each wanting to trade thoughts on what felt like the second death of Cesar Chavez. His first death happened on April 23, 1993. He was 66 and died of natural causes. Over 50,000 people attended his funeral in Delano, Calif. And he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994.
At that time, I was in elementary school in suburban Chicago, far from California. It was then that I first learned of Chavez and his movement’s hard-fought efforts to secure better wages and improved working conditions for farm workers. As a daughter of janitors and a factory worker, I knew what better pay and the right to a union meant for people like us.
Chavez’s second death landed on Wednesday after a The New York Times investigation revealed he had been accused of sexual abuse and rape. NPR has not independently confirmed the allegations against Chavez in the Times investigation.
For several years before joining Morning Edition as an editor, I covered sexual violence for ProPublica, an investigative newsroom. My work there was often not about catching the bad guys but rather about listening, for extended periods of time, to the people they hurt. This work took me to places such as Alaska and Utah where I met a broad range of people who were assaulted in recent years and some, who like Huerta, never spoke of their experiences for decades.
Consistent with national statistics, the perpetrators whom I wrote about were often family, bosses, clergy or others in positions of power.
“I have kept this secret long enough. My silence ends here,” Dolores Huerta, 95, said in a statement on Wednesday.
JC Olivera/Getty Images for State of the Ar/Getty Images North America
hide caption
toggle caption
JC Olivera/Getty Images for State of the Ar/Getty Images North America
This week, many of the voices of the victims I spoke with hearkened back to the experiences that the New York Times‘s investigation revealed in telling of the sexual abuse that Ana Murguia, Debra Rojas and Dolores Huerta shared with the publication. I was grateful to learn Murguia’s and Rojas’ names alongside the much more familiar one of Huerta, the civil rights icon in her own right who co-led the United Farm Workers movement that made Chavez famous.
I’ve learned that there is no timeline for naming what was done to you by people you trusted. I’ve learned that justice for many means the world recognizing the harm done to them — and the difficult work they have done to no longer live defined by it. I’ve learned that people care about protecting others. And that sometimes by sharing their stories, survivors hope to prevent future harm.
My friends and I may be down a hero this week. But, we gained two new heroes in Ana Murguia and Debra Rojas, who, alongside Dolores Huerta, showed us it’s never too late to speak up. In fact, it might be the only way out for them and others.
Replacing Griffith Park’s historic but idle swimming pool is likely to take at least three years and cost $40 million while delivering a competition pool, a neighboring recreational pool and a rehabilitated pool house with a gender-neutral bathhouse facility, city officials and designers told Los Feliz residents at an open house meeting Thursday night.
“The pool is being completely replaced. It leaks like a sieve,” said Stephanie Kingsnorth, principal of the architecture firm Perkins Eastman, addressing about 50 community members in a room next to the park’s visitor center.
Perkins Eastman, which is leading the design of the pool site, also worked on the renovation and expansion of Griffith Observatory from 2002 to 2006, when the firm was known as Pfeiffer Partners.
While neighbors look on, an artist’s rendition shows the proposed replacement of the Griffith Park Pool and rehabilitation of the pool house. The meeting was held at the Griffith Park Visitor Center Auditorium.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
The pool and pool house at Riverside Drive and Los Feliz Boulevard date to 1927, long before Interstate 5 was routed just east of the site in 1964. After decades as a popular spot for children’s swim lessons and recreational lap swimmers, the pool was shut down amid COVID-19 pandemic measures in early 2020. When the city tried to refill the pool, workers found that it no longer held water.
At one point early in planning to replace it, the city Bureau of Engineering forecast construction costs of $28 million. City officials say the project is complicated because of the nearness of the freeway and the Los Angeles River.
Kingsnorth said the project is nearing the end of its design development stage, with many details still under discussion.
In place of the existing seasonal pool, schematic drawings now show a new year-round competition pool, 50 meters long, 25 yards wide and from 3-foot, 6-inches to 12-foot, 9-inches deep.
Next to it, drawings show a training pool 25 yards long and 50 feet wide, with an ADA-compliant gentle slope down to about 4 feet deep.
The two-story pool house’s red tile roof, wooden trellises and Spanish Colonial Revival features will look roughly the same on the outside, Kingsnorth said, and the rehabilitation will comply with federal standards for historic structures.
But some formerly open-air areas will now be covered. An elevator and second set of stairs will be added inside, along with features to boost energy sustainability and meet modern accessibility laws. The site’s open-air showers will be rinse-only.
On the ground floor, the building’s open-air male and female changing rooms will merge into one larger indoor gender-neutral area with private changing rooms and toilet stalls, Kingsnorth said.
“Every single toilet room and dressing room is an individual room,” Kingsnorth said.
Kingsnorth said the gender-neutral dressing room design was not mandated by state or federal restrictions but was a priority for the city’s Recreation and Parks Department. On projects like this, Kingsnorth said, “this is something that’s more common for equity and inclusion.”
Questions from the community focused on features of the pool, public access, cost and effects of the construction work.
“We’re very anxious to have the school come back, so that the kids can learn to swim,” said Marian Dodge, a longtime area resident and past president of the Los Feliz Improvement Assn.
The Griffith Park Pool, seen here in 2023, has been closed since 2020, when city workers found major leakage problems.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
The pool site is within City Council District 4, represented by Nithya Raman, who was not present. Her staffers organized the meeting and urged residents to send questions and comments to griffithparkpool@lacity.org.
The next steps, a handout from the city and design firm read, include creation of construction documents (estimated at six months), obtaining city permits (five months), selecting a construction contractor (five months), construction (18 months), and “project close-out” (six months). If that schedule is met, completion would come in a little over 40 months, around July 2029.
“This is ambitious, but we’re confident that we can get there,” Kingsnorth said.
In an hourlong presentation, followed by about a dozen questions and answers, Kingsnorth was joined by city officials, including Ohaji Abdallah, assistant division head of the Bureau of Engineering’s architectural division, and
Maha Yateem, the Recreation and Parks Department’s principal recreation supervisor for citywide aquatics.
The plan calls for three rows of shaded concrete bleachers for spectators alongside the competition pool. Yateem said the competition pool will include a diving board, adding that “we’re working on a location for that now.”
Because the project means removing tons of existing pool materials and bringing in new ones, “the construction here is going to be quite intense,” Abdallah said. He and Kingsnorth said the “haul route” of construction trucks has not been decided, and Abdallah said he and other officials are discussing the plan’s possible impact on Los Feliz Nursery School, which stands near the pool.
When considering construction costs and “soft costs” like design and environmental review, “I expect this to be about $40 million,” Abdallah said, adding that the project will be vying with other city priorities for dollars from the general fund. He also noted that current estimates were made “before the war started” in Iran and gas prices surged.
After the meeting, Kingsnorth said, “We’re ready to pause if we need to because of the outlying state of the world.”
Taylor Frankie Paul attends the Oscars on Sunday, a week ahead of her scheduled Bachelorette premiere.
Mike Coppola/Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Mike Coppola/Getty Images
The new season of ABC’s reality TV series The Bachelorette was all filmed and set to premiere on Sunday. But parent company Disney now says it will not air as planned.
The decision to shelve the show’s 22nd season came on Thursday, after TMZ published a video it says shows would-be bachelorette Taylor Frankie Paul physically attacking her then-boyfriend, Dakota Mortensen, in 2023.
“In light of the newly released video just surfaced today, we have made the decision to not move forward with the new season of ‘The Bachelorette’ at this time, and our focus is on supporting the family,” Disney Entertainment said in a statement reported by the Associated Press, New York Times and others.
The video, filmed by Mortensen, appears to show Paul hitting, grabbing and throwing three barstools at him. A child can be heard crying on the couch nearby, and Mortensen says at one point: “Your daughter is sitting right there.”
Paul has three children: two with her ex-husband Tate Paul and one, born in 2024, with Mortensen. She confirmed the end of their three-year on-again, off-again relationship in May 2025. NPR has reached out to both of their representatives.
In a statement shared with NBC News, Paul’s representative called the video the “latest installment of [Mortensen’s] never-ending, desperate, attention-seeking, destructive campaign to harm Taylor without any regard for the consequences for their child.”
Paul’s representative told People in a statement that Paul is “exploring all of her options, seeking support, and preparing to own and share her story,” and “very grateful for ABC’s support as she prioritizes her family’s safety and security.”
Mortenesen told Entertainment Weekly that he categorically denies “these baseless claims about me and our relationship,” calling it “a deeply upsetting situation.”
“I am focusing on our son and his safety, and hope that Taylor will do the same,” he added.
NPR has not independently verified the authenticity of the video, which TMZ says was used as evidence in legal proceedings. But it matches Utah’s Herriman City Police Department’s description of a February 2023 incident that led to Paul’s arrest on charges of assault, criminal mischief and commission of domestic violence in the presence of a child.
Court records obtained by NPR show that Paul agreed to plead guilty to the third-degree felony of aggravated assault and has been serving 36 months of probation. When asked about the incident on a 2025 podcast, she acknowledged that her kids were present but said she “never had hurt” her daughter and “never intentionally did anything with my children.”
The couple’s turbulent relationship was a central plot point of the other reality TV show that made Paul famous: The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, which premiered in 2024 and just released its fourth season last week.
Earlier this week, People and other entertainment outlets reported that filming of the show’s fifth season had been halted amid reports of an investigation into domestic assault allegations involving Paul and Mortensen — presumably a separate incident, though details are scarce.
An unnamed spokesperson with Utah’s Draper City Police Department told People that “allegations have been made in both directions,” and “contact was made with involved parties” on Feb. 24 and 25, though declined to elaborate as the investigation is ongoing. NPR has reached out to Draper police, but did not hear back in time for publication.
There’s a lot we still don’t know. But if you’re just tuning in, we can help fill in some gaps.
(Left-right) Jennifer Affleck, Mayci Neeley, Mikayla Matthews, Taylor Frankie Paul, and Miranda McWhorter of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives attend an event at SiriusXM Studios in May 2025.
Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images
Who are we talking about?
At the center of the controversy is Taylor Frankie Paul.
She’s a 31-year-old influencer best known as the self-proclaimed creator of “MomTok,” a friend group-slash-collective of Utah-based Mormon moms that rose to social media fame in 2020.
They posted dance trends, beauty routines, skits and lifestyle videos to TikTok, promoting a more modern side of Mormonism and challenging its traditional gender roles. But it didn’t take long for controversy to strike, in the form of the 2022 “soft swinging scandal.”
The what scandal?
Paul revealed in a May 2022 livestream video that she and her then-husband, Tate Paul, had been “soft swinging” with other couples in their social circle. She described it as “when you hook up but don’t go all the way.”
“The agreement was just like, as long as we were both there and we saw it and we knew it, it was okay, and the second it goes behind without each other, then you’ve stepped out of the agreement,” she said. “And I did that.”
Paul and her then-husband, who had been in an open relationship, divorced later that year (she called the swinging situation “the tip of the iceberg” of their problems). Her confession also caused rifts in the MomTok community, since she had claimed — without naming names — that other members were involved in the swinging group.
When did Mortensen enter (and leave) the picture?
Paul and Mortensen confirmed their relationship on TikTok in September 2022, several months after she hinted at it online. It quickly turned rocky.
The couple broke up in December, then got back together in January 2023 — a month before the domestic violence incident that prompted Paul’s arrest. The relationship, while turbulent, continued, and Paul announced her pregnancy in September. Their son, Ever, was born in March 2024.
The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, the documentary-style show following Paul and her #MomTok circle, premiered on Hulu later that year.
The first season ended with the birth of Paul’s son and cliffhanger claims about Mortensen’s alleged infidelity, raised by another cast member, which he has denied. The two split in December 2024, but sparked reconciliation rumors the following spring. Their dynamic has remained a focus of the TV show, including in the most recent season.
What about these Mormon wives?
The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, aka SLOMW, follows eight Mormon moms-slash-influencers (and their families) as they navigate marriages, friendships, faith and increasingly, the personal and professional pressures of fame.
“I feel like if anything, it’s had a positive impact and it shows people that they don’t have to be perfect to be part of a religion, and be close to God and Jesus,” cast member Macyi Neeley told NPR last year.
Filming for the first season began in 2023, though paused and resumed after Paul’s arrest.
The first episode of its first season, which premiered in September 2024, shows Paul trying to smooth things over with the moms after the swinging scandal. It also covers the domestic violence incident, featuring body camera footage of police arresting a tearful Paul outside the house (though no footage of what transpired inside).
Hulu said the show’s premiere was its most-watched unscripted season debut of 2024, surpassing The Kardashians and leading to a rapid renewal of more episodes.
SLOMW has maintained a near-constant filming schedule, releasing two 10-episode seasons in 2025 and another earlier this month. Season four covers the fall of 2025, as Paul was preparing to film The Bachelorette.
The show’s popularity has catapulted several of its stars, not just Paul, into other high-profile roles. Two cast members, Whitney Leavitt and Jennifer Affleck, appeared on Dancing with the Stars. Leavitt is now doing a stint as Roxie in Chicago on Broadway, and helped the show smash its box-office record this week.
How did Paul become The Bachelorette?
Paul confirmed her relationship with Mortensen was officially over on a September 2025 episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast. That’s also where she announced she had been chosen as the bachelorette.
It was an unusual pick, not only because of Paul’s complicated relationship with her ex and her high profile, but because she hadn’t previously competed in the Bachelor franchise. That’s a first: Each bachelorette so far has been a fan-favorite contestant from the season of The Bachelor before it.
Disney is the parent company of both Hulu (SLOWM) and ABC (The Bachelorette). The choice to bring in an existing influencer-slash-reality star was seen as a move to revitalize the Bachelorette, which has seen a sharp decline in viewership in recent years. Part of that is, ironically, due to casting controversies including unexpected, post-season revelations about contestants on both sides of the rose.
What’s next for each show?
ABC plans to air a rerun of American Idol in the show’s place on Sunday. It’s not clear if Paul’s season of The Bachelorette will ever air. NPR has reached out to Disney for comment.
It’s also not clear when or whether filming of SLOMW will resume. At a press event for The Bachelorette earlier this week, Paul weighed in on the production pause, telling People: “my heart hurts to see it, to go through it, especially at this time.”
“It’s a heavy time, and it’s unfortunate,” she continued. “I’m struggling for sure, but also at the same time I feel like if I don’t show up, then I’m just giving these opportunities away and not enjoying what we’ve worked on and something super exciting that’s coming.”
Tribes want input, influence on Colorado River drought plan
CT Agency Picked To Lead Federal Career Training Grant Expansion
Delaware County uses AI traffic cameras to ease congestion on Lancaster Avenue
Rocket launch from Florida this weekend. Best places, beaches to watch
Georgia Tech gives chef Jose Andres $100K prize; more from Atlanta’s food scene
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Indiana Members Credit Union announced as new anchor tenant at Bottleworks District
Read the Ruling in The Times’s Lawsuit Against the Pentagon
NYC Mayor Mamdani’s wife glorified terrorists in online posts, criticized US military: report
Curro Rodríguez: from bankruptcy to global water empire
Jury finds Elon Musk misled investors during Twitter purchase
Pritzker pushes prosecutions of Trump officials as part of Dem ‘Project 2029’ agenda
-
Detroit, MI2 days agoDrummer Brian Pastoria, longtime Detroit music advocate, dies at 68
-
Oklahoma7 days agoFamily rallies around Oklahoma father after head-on crash
-
Nebraska1 week agoWildfire forces immediate evacuation order for Farnam residents
-
Georgia5 days agoHow ICE plans for a detention warehouse pushed a Georgia town to fight back | CNN Politics
-
Massachusetts1 week agoMassachusetts community colleges to launch apprenticeship degree programs – The Boston Globe
-
Alaska6 days agoPolice looking for man considered ‘armed and dangerous’
-
Southwest1 week agoTalarico reportedly knew Colbert interview wouldn’t air on TV before he left to film it
-
Michigan1 week agoMichigan-based Stryker hit with cyberattack