The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Orange County is Hulu‘s first spinoff of its #MomTok reality hit, and it moves the format out of Utah and into the county where American reality television first learned to film wealthy women arguing over dinner. The new installment is an unscripted ensemble series about nine mothers and influencers in Southern California, streaming on Hulu in the United States and on Disney+ around the world. The title promises Mormon wives. The cast list raises a different question: what is left of a show about Mormon wives when several of the women on it have stepped away from the church, or never belonged to it?

Hulu’s logline describes “a community where beliefs are not just their religion; they are their identity,” and splits the group between women who defend their way of life and women who “embrace change.” That is the Saints-against-Sinners structure that carried the Utah series. The Orange County version stretches it further. Its line-up includes Bobbi Althoff, the podcaster who has said publicly that she is “not Mormon,” although her brother is, and two long-running creators, Aspyn Ovard and Avery Woods, who have both openly distanced themselves from the church after marrying and having children young.

The bridge between the two shows is Jen Affleck, the only cast member from the original making the move west. Affleck appeared in all five seasons of the Utah series and competed on Dancing with the Stars, and she told PEOPLE last year that her family was relocating to California. In the trailer she lays out the premise herself: “After ‘Dancing with the Stars,’ I decided to move to Orange County. Me and Whitney had become friends with two different groups of women who had ties to the Mormon church. So I combined both groups.”

The rest of the cast leans heavily on people who already had an audience before Hulu called. Ovard has more than three million YouTube followers built on beauty and fashion videos. Madison Bontempo runs The Fishfam, a family channel built around her husband and five children. Woods is a former nurse who found her following on TikTok, and Jordan McClanahan works as a fitness trainer and influencer. McCall DaPron is the sister of Utah star Mayci Neeley, which keeps a family line running between the two shows. Ashleigh Pease, from Australia, is the franchise’s first non-American cast member, and Salomé Andrea comes from Guam. Althoff is the best known outside social media, thanks to the deadpan interviews on The Really Good Podcast, including a widely shared conversation with Drake.

Why Orange County

The setting is the most deliberate choice in the package. Orange County is where Bravo launched The Real Housewives franchise 20 years ago, and Newport Beach and Huntington Beach, where production was reported in the spring, sit on the same stretch of coast that Laguna Beach and Selling the OC later used as reality backdrops. Moving #MomTok there is a statement of intent: Hulu wants Mormon Wives to stop being one show and become a brand that can travel.

Disney executive Rob Mills, who oversees unscripted programming at Walt Disney Television, said as much to The Hollywood Reporter when the spinoff was announced at Hulu’s Get Real House event. “When you greenlight something, you never say, ‘This is a franchise,'” he said, before admitting that the title was chosen with exactly that possibility in mind, a “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives of Blank” that could be repeated elsewhere. He also set a bar for the new cast by pointing to the original, where the women themselves were made producers: “we would not have done this if we didn’t think it could reach that bar.”

A friendship group built for the camera

The Utah series grew out of #MomTok, a circle of Mormon mothers who had built their followings on TikTok before Hulu arrived, so the friendships and fallings-out existed online first and the cameras followed. The Orange County installment reverses that order. By Affleck’s own account in the trailer, the group exists because she merged two social circles that did not previously share one, and at least one of the women draws the line early: “We’re not MomTok.” The premise suggests a show about whether a group assembled for the camera can generate the loyalties and grudges that the original inherited from real life.

The trailer also signals where the conflict will come from. It teases moral divides, divorce and polygamy, and one cast member offers the line that sums up the format: “I have a secret and I know all these other girls have secrets too.” Polygamy is a loaded word in this context. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints abandoned plural marriage in 1890 and has excommunicated members who practise it since, so any storyline that raises it puts the cast in direct tension with the faith the title names. How the series handles that, as gossip or as a real disagreement about belief, is not something the publicity material reveals.

For Disney, the timing makes the bet easy to read. The parent series has run five seasons and received an order for 20 more episodes, and the spinoff arrives as a full season at once rather than week by week, the same all-at-once release the Utah seasons have used. Because Disney+ carries the series outside the United States, the Orange County cast reaches an international audience on the same day as American viewers.

What the format cannot settle is the question built into its own name. The Utah women were paid to live their faith, or their break from it, in public, and viewers could at least measure the confessions against years of videos posted before the show. The Orange County cast arrives with mixed relationships to the church and a producer who openly calls the title a template. When one of them confesses a secret on camera, it will be harder to tell whether the audience is watching a crisis of belief or a franchise doing exactly what it was designed to do.

Release, episodes and where to watch

All ten episodes of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Orange County premiere on Thursday, November 12, 2026, on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ in the United States and on Disney+ internationally. The series is produced by Jeff Jenkins Productions in association with 3BMG and Walt Disney Television Alternative. The five seasons of the original series are available on the same platforms.

Who is in the cast? Ashleigh Pease, Aspyn Ovard, Avery Woods, Bobbi Althoff, Jen Affleck, Jordan McClanahan, Madison Bontempo, McCall DaPron and Salomé Andrea.

Is everyone in the cast Mormon? No. Althoff has said she is not a member of the church, and Ovard and Woods have distanced themselves from it. Like the Utah series, the show mixes practising members with women who have left.

Does anyone from the original show appear? Jen Affleck is the only cast member from the Utah series in the main line-up.

Is it scripted? No. It is an unscripted reality series that follows the cast’s real lives, filmed in and around Newport Beach and Huntington Beach.