Miranda McWhorter Shares Gossip About Controversial ‘Mormon Wives’ Swinging Incident

While followers of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” are quite familiar with the soft-swinging controversy involving Taylor Frankie Paul, they have solely been exposed to Taylor’s perspective on the matter. However, the silence has been broken by Miranda McWhorter, who was also part of the scandal and is now gearing up for her debut in the upcoming season of the show.

As the release of season 2 draws near on Hulu, some undisclosed truths are surfacing, heightening the anticipation among MomTok enthusiasts for fresh, binge-worthy episodes filled with more intrigue than the first season offered.

Stepping into the MomTok circle for the new season, Miranda is no newcomer to the group’s tangled web of conflicts. In fact, she was at the core of a major altercation involving Taylor that occurred in the first season. (Miranda constitutes the other portion of Taylor’s soft-swinging scandal.) While Taylor’s perspective has been widely known among fans until now, Miranda has decided to share her side of the story.

Miranda was Taylor’s bestie before the swinging occurred, and avid viewers of the show are ready for her to shake things up in the anticipated second season.

Miranda recently spoke to PEOPLE about joining the show and the swinging scandal entered the chat.

“I think that within the show and within Mormonism, the fact of the matter is that we’re being forthcoming about those skeletons,” she told PEOPLE. “They can only be obviously hard to talk about. Me personally, obviously it took me time to be open about all of that, but I think it shows that you can be open and honest, whether or not you’re judged.”

She continued, “That’s something that you can still lean into your authentic self and not have to care so much if you’re judged. You can still be religious or you can not be religious, and it doesn’t really matter either way.”

Miranda explained in her introduction on the show that it’s easier for her to speak her truth now that the relationship with her ex-husband Chase McWhorter is done. And she knows she’s got some work ahead of her to “win these girls over.”

“What I really am craving and wanting back is that support and that friendship, but I know that I’m going to kind of have to win these girls over, and I get it,” she said. “But I for sure feel like I’m walking into a lion’s den.”

After such a public scandal, the two friends had some repairing to do to their friendship.

“I think people forget our friendship was way prior to our scandal, if you will,” Taylor told PEOPLE. “It was four years of all the time, always together, phone calls, everything. We were closer, I’d say, than our families – hanging out more.”

Emotions ran high after the scandal and tore the two friends apart.

“I think a lot of Taylor’s frustrations were with me not being totally authentic and truthful,” Miranda explained. “I was just like, ‘Well, everyone wasn’t hooking up with everyone,’ and I just left it at that. I get why that would feel unfair to her. I think there was a lot of fear, guilt, and shame that played a role in that for me, things that I needed to address in my personal life between my marriage, my religion, all of that.”

Miranda also explained that she’s “unpacked” it all over time.

“I think over time as I unpacked that individually, it allowed me to unpack that more publicly, and obviously, with Taylor, as well,” she said. “I can’t speak for her, but I feel like me finally addressing that, and also her addressing the hurt aside from the swinging thing, was probably very validating for us both.”

In a video shared by PEOPLE, Taylor and Miranda sat together to share insight into the swinging scandal and their friendship. Taylor said they were going to “come together from different perspectives” to share more of the story.

“I think when you come to terms with something that’s part of your reality, part of your story, I don’t think that there’s so much concern about it being maybe part of your identity sometimes,” Miranda said. “I think for me, yes, I don’t want my story or who I am to be the swinging thing. I would hate for that to be the case, obviously, there’s a lot more to me than that, but it is part of my story.”