Aspyn Ovard Opens Up: Divorce, a Throuple and 'Mormon Wives' Orange County

Aspyn Ovard joined Hulu's "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Orange County" knowing the show would strip away what she calls the last private corner of her life. The spinoff of the Utah-based franchise hit screens on Nov. 12, with Ovard starring alongside Bobbi Althoff, Avery Woods, Salomé Andrea, McCall DaPron and Jordan McClanahan.

A week before release, the 30-year-old told Variety she felt anxious about the leap. "It's so different than social media, so I really have like no idea what to expect," she said over Zoom from a West Hollywood hotel room.

Ovard has lived online for roughly 16 years — first on YouTube as HauteBrilliance, then Instagram, now TikTok. Her audience watched the Utah-born creator marry Parker Ferris at 19 and welcome three daughters (Cove, Lola and Elle) by 27. In 2024, right after her youngest was born, she filed for divorce. That move shocked fans who had followed the high-school sweethearts for a decade.

Then she met Bri Davis. Two years on, Ovard is in a relationship with both Davis and Davis' husband, Billy — a throuple, as they call it. The show's first episode introduces the three, visibly in love despite Ferris' disapproval. "You guys are clout chasing!" Ferris tells Billy and Bri in a tense early scene. "It's so obvious."

What does the show reveal that the internet never did?

The hardest disclosure comes in a couples therapy session: Ovard and Ferris's daughter has terminal cancer. "Everything happened so out of nowhere," Ovard says in the episode, never naming which daughter is ill. "One day she was OK, and the next day she wasn't."

Hulu's reps asked that Ovard not face questions about her children's health. But she acknowledges this private three-year ordeal — not the throuple — is what rattled her most before release. "The internet has kind of been my last piece of normalcy for my life, so saying goodbye to that is definitely very life-changing for me," she said. "I've already been through so much, so I know I'll survive."

The show also unpacks the "10-year secret" Ovard had alluded to on social media: Ferris was drinking behind her back. She learned it two months after her father died from alcoholism. "It was very earth-shattering to me to learn about those things that went on and I wasn't aware," she said, adding that she expects viewers to be "underwhelmed" after TikTok's wilder theories.

Why did she sign on at all?

Ovard once said in a Q&A that she would never do reality TV. Two things changed her mind: she's a longtime fan of the Utah show, and, as she put it, "especially as the breadwinner and provider for my family, it was an obvious yes."

On Mormonism, she's blunt. She's baptized in the church but doesn't identify with it. "There's so much Mormon influence in my life, even just with getting married at 19 and having kids young," she said — while arguing the cast's progressive members and active Mormons have much to learn from each other.

Where do Parker and the throuple stand now?

In a much better place, according to Ovard. She says Ferris "just needed time" and, having seen Billy and Bri's consistency, has come around. The proof: "We're literally going on vacation together next week, when the show comes out" — Ovard, Billy, Bri, Parker and the girls.

She also addressed the Las Vegas clash with McCall and Jordan over whether they support her relationship. For her, it was bigger than personal acceptance: the Mormon Church doesn't recognize same-sex marriages, and she wanted her devout friends to say plainly that they support gay rights. "That is just a hill I will die on," she said, noting producers cut much of the political context.

Her closest castmate is Avery Woods. And she had warm words for Jen Affleck, who filed for divorce as the show launched: "I think Jen is so brave... I remember how lonely it was going through my divorce."

What's next?

Ovard plans to take time off after release and figure out her relationship with the internet as she goes. Her stated goal is simple: "I hope people can understand me a little bit better." For a creator who curated her privacy for 16 years, that's the real bet the show represents.