The highly-anticipated Secret Lives of Mormon Wives Hulu docuseries is a source of viral chatter, but star Mikayla Matthews is "disappointed" her journey with chronic illness isn't part of the conversation.
Matthews, 24, is one of the eight women in the show's cast which aims to show the interworkings of the Mormon #MomTok, a group of dancing Utah influencers who found themselves broken during a 2022 "soft-swinging" scandal.
Fellow momfluencers Taylor Frankie Paul, Demi Engemann, Jennifer Affleck, Jessi Ngatikaura, Layla Wessel, Mayci Neeley, and Whitney Leavitt round out the cast.
While Matthews says she's glad viewers are learning that there's more to the woman than just the swinging drama, she can't help but notice that the "relatable" scenes she filmed about her undiagnosed chronic illness – which was at its "absolute worst" during filming – did not make the final cut.
Matthews told Newsweek on Monday that she's been on a journey to find a diagnosis for nearly three years.
"After I had my third child, I started getting really bad allergies," the mother of three said. "Then I started getting molluscum on my neck, and then little rashes all over. After that, I got my breast implants in, and the rashes got even worse."
The reality star says she was put on steroids three different times and gained "12 pounds of inflation." She went through steroid withdrawal which included "head-to-toe rashes, opened wounds, hives, and shakes" as well as a metal toxicity from mercury fillings in her mouth.
"Once we started filming is the first step I took to start healing my chronic illness," she recalled. "That's when I took out my breast implants, and they filmed that but it wasn't shown."
"I filmed all of my storyline for season one, and it just wasn't shown," Matthews claimed.
Having not seen the series until its September 6 Hulu drop, Matthews tuned in to find no trace of her filmed medical battle.
"It was definitely frustrating," she told Newsweek. "I did know that my story wasn't going to be in it because I was asked questions about the drama. What was disappointing for me is that I'm not really in the series at all."
On Sunday, Matthews posted photos of herself to Instagram in hospital beds with red patches and bumps on her face, stomach, back, and legs.
"It was hard for me to show up, especially because filming was so difficult for me and mentally hard and physically hard on my body, but I was just a good sport, and I was like, I'm just going to show up and support my friends and share my story," she told Newsweek.
"You can see I'm very disassociated when I'm filming because I was just in so much pain every day. I had full-body nerve damage. I couldn't really focus on anything except for my skin just hurting all the time. Also, I had the mental aspect of going through steroid withdrawal and being on medications, which is so horrible for the chemical imbalance in your body."
When asked about watching the series, Matthews noted, "I would look good one day, and then the next day, it looked like I had lost 12 pounds, and I look sick, and my eyebrows were falling out and my hair was falling out."
"I feel like that's what's relatable with people with chronic illness, which is that healing is not linear, and it really looks different for everyone."
Newsweek has contacted Hulu for comment.
'Scared To Step Foot In The Church'
All eight of the women in the Hulu series still identify as Mormon although not all of them regularly attend church, including Matthews.
"I haven't been going to church for a long time, but I always say to my friends who are going, 'I couldn't imagine going to church after everything,'" Matthews said about the church's reaction to the series.
However, she does think that the series has already made an impact for modern-day devout Mormon women.
"I do think it has already sparked a little bit of an important conversation in the church around sex or the gender roles. So I think for me, at least, it's going to be a positive thing – but I would definitely be scared to step foot in the church."
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