Jen Affleck Sees Mormon Wives Season 4 A Little Differently Now

Jen Affleck is ready to do it all — and the past year proves that she can. In July, she welcomed her third child with her husband, Zac Affleck. By September, she was competing on Dancing with the Stars Season 34, all while caring for a newborn and filming The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives Season 4 (streaming now).

“I’m proud of myself for going on that stage eight weeks postpartum, and trying the best that I can to navigate everything while still trying to get my story across,” Jen tells Bustle. “Being a mother is empowering, and also going after your dreams and goals is empowering.” Jen didn’t win the mirrorball, but that’s almost beside the point.

Going on the show didn’t just make Jen lifelong friends and endear her to Southern California — “I think there’s a reason LA’s calling me back,” she says with a playful gleam in her eye, but it also helped the 26-year-old tap into a long-forgotten creative side, like her love for writing music.

“You become a mom, and you forget about the things that you did growing up,” she says. “But I realized after Dancing with the Stars, if I was able to make this happen, why not go back to the things that I really enjoy?”

While the experience ushered in a bright new perspective, she acknowledges there were bumps along the way. Though she started Season 4 in a friendly place with castmate (and fellow DWTS contender) Whitney Leavitt, even crashing with her family until she found a place in LA, she ended the latest installment reiterating her belief that Whitney is “transactional.”

After Whitney expressed her hurt that Jen didn’t congratulate her for booking Chicago, Jen said she didn’t feel like they’re “actual, genuine friends” — a comment that took Whitney aback, prompting her explosive airing of grievances.

Reflecting on the season, Jen says she was experiencing both “a lot of brain fog” and the pressure to show up her best as a mom — but she’d do things differently today. “That’s where my head was at, and why I wasn’t really able to see the other side of the story. But now looking back, I do know. And so when you know better, [you can] do better, right?”

Below, Jen opens up further about Whitney, life in LA, and what comes next.

This season, you mentioned church in LA is different than it is in Utah. How do you feel leaving that environment has informed or inspired you?

A faith crisis isn’t something you just go through overnight. It can be, honestly, a lifetime of trying to navigate — because at least for me, being raised in the church, a lot of what’s been taught to me is so ingrained that I’m having to do a lot of deconstructing and figure out what it is I’m trying to take away and remove from my life.

There’s a lot more pressure in Utah [to conform], especially with the majority of the state being [Mormons]. In California, I definitely feel like there’s not as much pressure, because it’s way more diverse. So I feel like we’re able to express [ourselves] in different ways.

Your relationship with Whitney begins in a hopeful place. Was there a turning point — maybe that we didn’t even see as viewers — that made you say, I don’t feel like there’s a genuine friendship here?

I don’t want to talk about the negatives. If anything, looking back at Season 4, I just need to take accountability for where I went wrong. There are a lot of things that I regret, and all you can do is learn and move forward and try to be better.

But I definitely am inspired by Whitney in so many ways. Her going on Broadway [to star in Chicago] and seeing her perform was truly so inspiring. She’s genuinely the hardest worker I know. She should be proud of herself.

That’s great to hear! Are there things looking back that you wouldn’t have done?

Looking back, I was so disassociated [from] life. I was just trying to get through Dancing with the Stars. People don’t know the extent of how hard it actually is to be on that show, and to perform in front of millions of people, that pressure you feel, the anxiety you feel days before even going on the stage — it keeps you up at night. And I was, on top of that, freshly postpartum, doing nightly shifts with my newborn. So much more was going on that people see small snippets of the show and think, Oh, this is the whole perspective. When really, there’s so much more going on that wasn’t shown.

Do you feel like you’re in a good place now?

We’re definitely cordial, I would say. I have apologized to her, and I’m truly just happy for her and excited to see where she goes.

The credits of this season show that you all are executive producers now! Do you have a tangible impact on how the show is made?

Not yet. We have no control or say. If that were the case, I think we’d all be editing ourselves like crazy, and we wouldn’t have the show that we have, right?

For sure. We hear more from DadTok this season. What is your take on that? Or is there a competition there?

Let’s be honest — as much as MomTok dislikes DadTok, DadTok does bring a lot to the show. They’ve brought the humor this season. I was laughing a lot just watching it back. So I’m all for it.

There have been rumors about spinoffs, an LA Mormon Wives — theoretically, would you be interested in that?

You’ll just have to wait and see. But let’s just say I love California. [Laughs]

I love the show’s viral line, “Will MomTok survive this?” How has your understanding of your own survival and perseverance evolved over the last few years?

Apart from the show, just being a mom — I wake up every single day, and I’m like, Will we survive this? When I’m getting my kids dressed for school, I’m like, Will I survive this? I’m asking that question every second of the day. Because being a mom is the most beautiful thing you will ever do. I feel like the most beautiful things are the hardest things in life. So I always have to remind myself, when things get hard, there is beauty. There’s beauty in pain. There’s beauty in hard things.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.