Since Coming Out, Layla Taylor Is The Happiest She’s Ever Been

Layla Taylor is a vision in satin when we sit down for a conversation in the middle of Madison Square Park on a hot, late summer day. Despite sitting directly in the peak afternoon sunlight, the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star is seemingly poreless, unfrazzled by humidity, effortlessly musing about whether the month of June is more gay or Mormon. Decidedly, June is gay. Musical theater, however, is definitely Mormon, she says with a laugh. See on Instagram Taylor is somehow as earnest as she is polished, friendly and warm while seeming like an angel gracing New York with her presence. She has made a career out of being real and raw on-screen, catapulting her from early 2020s “MomTok” influencer to fully fledged reality TV sensation on the Hulu smash hit. Though the cast of SLMW as a whole has long been known for paving new paths for what Mormonism — or, in some cases, leaving the Mormon Church — can look like, Taylor herself is entering an even deeper, new chapter of authenticity as season five premieres. In June, Taylor shook reality TV fans after she came out as bisexual on Jay Shetty’s podcast, telling him, “We’re only on this earth for however long we are here and I’ll be damned if I’m not able to be fully who I am.” Just days later, she soft-launched her girlfriend, posting nothing but a tattooed arm, though it didn’t take long for internet sleuths to deduce who it was: Denver-based internet creator and barber Kelsie Carpenter. “Some of these girls, or some of these guys need to go into the FBI,” she tells me. Though she confirms her girlfriend’s name for me, for now, she’s keeping their relationship private, not secret.Taylor’s coming out has been public, however, and for good reason. It is impossible to deny that though there is a growing number of reality TV stars announcing themselves on the sapphic spectrum, from Selling Sunset’s Chrishell Stause to The Bachelor’s Gabby Windey to The Real Housewives of New York’s Jen