The Jessi & Demi Money Drama From ‘SLOMW,’ Explained

If you watched Season 1 of Hulu’s The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, then the words “truth box” probably sends a shiver down your spine. The truth box was the source of a ton of drama and truth bombs in that first season, majorly shaking up the women of MomTok. Now, in Season 2, the infamous truth box came back — this time to help finally reveal what happened between Jessi Ngatikaura and Demi Engemann before the newest season was released (among other things). 

Fans of the show have been confused about this issue — the two MomTok stars were super close, but clearly had a falling out at some point. However, the lack of details or timeline made it nearly impossible to pinpoint what caused the rift. Thankfully, the drama was addressed in the newest season of the show, which premiered on May 15. Unfortunately, the gals weren’t the most straightforward about how it all went down… so here’s what fans have been able to piece together so far. 

The issue between the two started before the filming for Season 2 started, and was sparked by the discussions of contracts and money for the new season. The MomTok interpretation of what happened is that essentially Demi was willing to let the producers cut Jessi out of the second season of the show in order for her contract to be larger and so that she could make more money. 

This gets brought up on the show during the truth box scene, when someone anonymously writes a question for Jessi that says, “Are you worried Demi was willing to take a bigger contract even if it meant you would be dropped from the show?” In the show, both Jessi and Demi laugh in response, and make a joke that this is something they can’t ever run away from. Then, Jessi says she is in a different financial situation than the others, because she does have a business outside of MomTok. She runs a hair salon that must be pretty profitable, because one of the others makes a joke about Jessi being a millionaire. When Demi begins to explain her side of the story in a confessional section of the show, she also brings up Jessi’s business, saying, “Jessi sits on an empire of this hair business and does really well financially, so it felt a little selfish to me.” 

However, Demi also gets called out by a couple of the other MomTok members, who say they have heard from other people that she is saying she deserves bigger deals and contracts than some of the other co-stars. Although Demi denies this claim, in another confessional, she *does* try to assert her spot as one of the standouts of MomTok. “It’s not a shock that I was a fan favorite,” Demi says in a confessional part of the show. “I feel like I’m an asset. I should fight for more.”

However, it seems like this issue could have been about more than money, because Demi also says on the show, “Where I went wrong was being willing to knock [Jessi] off, but that came from a place of us being in a bad place.” So, does that mean they were already fighting before the contract issue came about? That’s anyone’s guess right now.

Although viewers don’t have any confirmation on the details of what went down, Jessi and fellow MomToker Mikayla Matthews went on The Viall Files to give more context, at least in terms of the whole contract disagreement. “Before Season 1 even aired, we started negotiating some different contracts as a group, and she basically threw me under the bus because I didn’t care to fight for more money and she wanted an absurd amount of money,” Jessi said. “We’re all in a call — and keep in mind, this is a call with our lawyer, managers who represent us, so we should be able to say as we feel. Some husbands were on, I was doing a podcast … so I joined the call late. When I joined the call the first thing I heard is Bret [Engemann, Demi’s husband,] saying, “If we don’t get this amount, everyone’s walking.” And I was like, “Ugh you can’t speak for me,” and so I said that because that’s initially what I heard. So I was like “Wait, wait, wait, I just want you to know that I am not willing to walk,” and he was pissed. And they were just so mad at me. That is the catalyst for everything.” Her Campus reached out to Demi for a response to Jessi’s claims on the podcast, but didn’t hear back in time for publication.

At that point in the interview, Mikayla jumped in to explain that, before Jessi joined  the call, the group had agreed to present as a united front in order to collectively get more money. She said they weren’t actually planning to walk away from the show, but wanted to leverage that threat as a bargaining tactic. (That’s showbiz, baby!) As Jessi pointed out, she didn’t get that memo, and that’s why she said what she said.

Jessi went on to say, “Then [Demi’s] calling everyone behind my back, being like … ‘Maybe Jessi doesn’t need to be on the show, then let’s get her off and we can all get more money.”

Of course, Jessi’s ousting from the show never came to fruition, and it seemed like the two women were able to patch things up before they started filming Season 2 (even if their rekindled friendship didn’t last too long).

Additional reporting by Jac Noel.

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