Demi Engemann‘s absence from The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives reunion sparked a lot of speculation about her status with the show.
During an Instagram Q&A on Sunday, June 8, Demi, 30, revealed why she wasn’t part of the upcoming Hulu special, writing, “I was [invited]. It was short notice and the only day they could get the location secured was the day that me and my entire family did Disneyland.”
Demi ultimately chose to visit the Happiest Place on Earth instead of hashing out issues with her costars, adding, “We had already booked all of our flights and the Airbnb was nonrefundable or / would’ve moved the trip to be there. I tried to have production move it to another day and they couldn’t swing it sadly.”
Hulu announced earlier this month that The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives would have its first reunion.
“Reunited and it feels so… good! Or does it? 👀,” the official Hulu Instagram account announced on Thursday, June 5, alongside photos of the cast. “#TheSecretLivesOfMormonWives S2 Reunion hosted by @nickviall is coming July 1 to @hulu and with #HuluOnDisneyPlus.”
The news included a first look at the special, which confirmed that Jen Affleck, Whitney Leavitt, Mikayla Matthews, Mayci Neeley, Jessi Ngatikaura, Taylor Frankie Paul, Layla Taylor and Miranda McWhorter would be in attendance. MomTok will also be joined by DadTok a.k.a Connor Leavittt, Zac Affleck, Jordan Ngatikaura, Dakota Mortensen, Jace Terry and Jacob Neely.
Demi’s absence comes after she ended the season at odds with the cast — minus Whitney, 32. (In addition to the affair claims from Vanderpump Villa’s Marciano Brunette, which she denied, Demi was accused by her costars of thinking she was more popular than the others after their reality show’s success.)
“There’s definitely things that I didn’t agree with what Demi did — and I’ll tell that to her face. She already knows that,” Whitney exclusively told Us Weekly in May. “But I think just more than anything, I just know that everyone is always going through something.”
Despite disagreeing with some of Demi’s behavior, Whitney defended their friendship, saying, “There’s a reason they’re reacting the way that they’re reacting and in this group, what I like to believe that the intent is to not be malicious or to intentionally hurt people. It’s so much deeper than that and unfortunately hurt people, hurt people.”
Whitney also weighed in on Demi’s future in MomTok.
“You have to compartmentalize relationships in this group and for Demi, she is an adult. If she wants to leave and doesn’t want to be a part of it anymore, that’s going to be her decision,” she told Us. “But I don’t need to go and follow suit and be like, ‘OK, peace out too.’ If I wanted to leave, then that has to be my own decision. I’m not going to do it because somebody else has left.”
Demi, for her part, noted in other responses on Sunday that not everything made it into the final cut.
“Most of the time I forget there’s cameras and it’s like anything else, it feels more natural the more you do it. but sometimes it hits me that it’s blasted out to the world and can be twisted and used against me and the nerves kick in for sure!” She wrote. “I hate that aspect. I’m learning to ride the wave of public perception. It’s ever changing and no one is judging me off the full story so it really doesn’t matter at the end of the day.”
She added: “There was almost zero context to most everything related to me! It felt like a bad dream watching it back.”
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