Jen Affleck Celebrates Her 27th Birthday with Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Orange County Spinoff Cast
"27 🎉🥳💗 thank you for all the love !!" Affleck wrote in the caption of a video posted on her Instagram
NEED TO KNOW
- Jen Affleck recently celebrated her 27th birthday
- The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star was joined by the cast of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Orange County for a party
- In March, PEOPLE first reported that a Secret Lives of Mormon Wives spinoff show was in the works, and was set to begin shooting in the spring
Jen Affleck is celebrating turning 27.
On May 29, the MomTok star recreated a social media trend on Instagram for her birthday. As the camera zoomed out, Affleck was joined by members of the Mormon Wives spinoff, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Orange County, including Aspyn Ovard and McCall DaPron, who is the sister of Mormon Wives OG Mayci Neeley.
“Happy bday Jen !!! So fun celebrating you tonight ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️,” Madison Bontempo, another Mormon Wives: Orange County star who was also in attendance, wrote in the comments.
PEOPLE first reported the spinoff series in March, with a source revealing that it was set to begin shooting later in the spring and will premiere in the fall.
At the time, a source told PEOPLE that the show was to be set in Orange County, and that Jen Affleck was the only original cast member who would star in the spinoff alongside nine new castmates. Representatives for Hulu did not respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment at the time.
Later, on April 22, Hulu announced the official cast list for the highly anticipated new series, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Orange County.
The show will star podcast host Bobbi Althoff, FishFam YouTuber Madison Bontempo and social media stars Aspyn Ovard, Avery Woods and Salomé Andrea, per a press release from the streaming service. In addition to newcomers Chandler Higginson and Ashleigh Pease, the West Coast series will also feature McCall DaPron, whose sister is original MomTok star Mayci Neeley.
The news of the spinoff came during reports of a production pause on the original Mormon Wives show. At the time, multiple sources confirmed to PEOPLE that the original Mormon Wives series had halted filming for season 5 — amid two domestic violence investigations into star Taylor Frankie Paul, 31, and her ex-boyfriend Dakota Mortensen, 33, by Utah police departments.
PEOPLE confirmed in April that production would resume for the show’s fifth season, though an exclusive source recently told PEOPLE that only new confessionals are being filmed.
“Right now, they’re just filming confessionals for season 5,” says the source. “They’ve decided they’re not going to film the rest of season 5.”
PEOPLE reached out to Hulu for comment regarding the information.
The uncertainty surrounding the status of filming on the popular Hulu show comes as its cast members have been embroiled in a number of scandals since mid-March.
Just days after news of the domestic violence investigations into Mortensen and Paul were made public, TMZ released a 2023 video of a violent altercation between the pair, in which she yelled, put Mortensen in a headlock and threw chairs at him while a child could be heard crying.
Paul had been previously arrested in 2023 for the alleged domestic violence incident — and pleaded guilty in abeyance to aggravated assault at the time — but the new buzz around the video’s release prompted ABC to call off Paul’s already-filmed season of The Bachelorette days before its slated premiere.
In April, prosecutors declined to file charges against Paul for the new domestic violence allegations involving Mortensen. The pair then appeared in court together that month for a hearing regarding their competing protective orders and custody for their shared 2-year-old son Ever.
Fans have also picked up on a deepening rift between Paul, Draper and several other members of the cast, and the MomTok members have traded increasingly fiery shots across social media.
In one post, for instance, cast member Mikayla Matthews, 26, wrote that she was “fed up” after a commenter called her “very rude” for her social media activity relating to Paul. Her husband, Jace Terry, 30, even weighed in, slamming Paul for being “notorious for blasting people publicly w/o private communication.”
“What a snake friend just did to me in the public eye after everything she just witnessed…the lack of empathy and silence was loud enough,” Paul wrote in an angry Mother’s Day post, seemingly referencing her feud with Matthews.
