The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star Whitney Leavitt is breaking down her decision to exit the #MomTok group chat.
“There were scenes that were taken out — more scenes of us as a group — but what set me, probably in the darkest place was … ,” Whitney, 31, began during the Wednesday, September 25, episode of “The Squeeze” podcast, promising she wouldn’t cry reliving it. “We were in Park City and we had this truth box, and in that moment that’s when Demi [Engemann] felt attacked. I could see it and I hated that I had put stuff in that room.”
Whitney and her Mormon Wives costars went on a cast trip during season 1 where they answered anonymous questions from one another via a “truth box.” On Whitney’s turn, she referred to Demi, 30, as “white trash.”
“But, after that, when Taylor [Frankie Paul] and I had gone up [to bed], Demi had shared a very personal and very vulnerable story of mine that I had no idea she had shared until that evening,” Whitney claimed. “Because that scene where I have toilet paper on my heel and we’re all at that dinner, I couldn’t compose myself because right before that Mayci [Neeley] has asked me if that was true. I just couldn’t believe that, regardless of you telling the other woman, that you had brought that on a national television show.”
Disney/Fred Hayes Mormon “Momtok” has made its way from your phone to your TV with Hulu’s upcoming series The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. The mom influencers took over TikTok in 2022 with their unconventional lifestyles while also “breaking a norm” associated with their religious practices and gender roles. The group subsequently faced scandal when […]
Whitney, who didn’t reveal what Demi had divulged, broke down in tears while explaining that the topic is “still hard” to discuss.
“I think if Demi knew how dark that moment was [and] me being under that treatment and how hard that was and how vulnerable that was for me, I don’t think she would have shared,” Whitney theorized. “I also know she was angry with me for telling Jen [Affleck] about the ‘too Mormon-y’ and the ‘white trash’ thing. After that, it just put me in a really dark place.”
The “truth box” fallout was the catalyst for Whitney “slowly separating” herself from the MomTok group, which also includes Layla Taylor, Mikayla Matthews and Jessi Ngatikaura.
“I was like, ‘Man, I don’t know if I can do this,’” she recalled on Wednesday’s episode. “That was such a vulnerable and personal thing in my life that I felt was taken away from me.”
Whitney further revealed that she has yet to speak to Demi about their friendship status, teasing that “maybe in the future” they can have a conversation.
By the end of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives season 1, Whitney had left the group as she and husband Connor Leavitt contemplated becoming homesteaders. In Us Weekly’s latest cover story, Whitney admitted that she doesn’t know if she’d ever return to MomTok.
“We’ll see,” she cryptically told Us.
Elaborating on “The Squeeze” podcast episode, Whitney noted that there would need to be “so many conversations” before she would potentially return to the influencer group. That being said, Whitney holds “no ill feelings” toward her Mormon Wives castmates.
“I wish them the best,” she concluded to podcast hosts Taylor Lautner and his wife, Tay Lautner.
