The “Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” star gets real about talking with former Mormons about alleged abuses covered up by the Church.

Heather Gay explains her fear of ‘swatting the hornet’s nest’ by making Surviving Mormonism docuseries

The "Real Housewives of Salt Lake City" star gets real about talking with former Mormons about alleged abuses covered up by the Church.

By Gerrad Hall

Gerrad Hall

Gerrad Hall is an editorial director at **, overseeing movie, awards, and music coverage. He is also host of The Awardist podcast, and has cohosted EW’s live Oscars, Emmys, SAG, and Grammys red carpet shows. He has appeared on Good Morning America, The Talk, Access Hollywood, Extra!, and other talk shows, delivering the latest news on pop culture and entertainment.

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June 20, 2026 3:38 p.m. ET

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'Surviving Mormonism' and 'Real Housewives of Salt Lake City' star Heather Gay. Credit:

Natalie Cass/Bravo

- Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Heather Gay speaks with other former Mormons for her docuseries Surviving Mormonism.

- The people she speaks with detail alleged abuses against them, which they claim were covered up by the Church.

- Gay explains why she feels shame about her own role in recruiting people to join the Church.

*The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City* star Heather Gay can finally say it: She was raised in a cult.

It's something she came to terms with while making her docuseries, *Surviving Mormonism* (available to stream on Peacock).

"I spoke to a lot of experts, and I studied the BITE (Behavioral, Information, Thought, and Emotional control) model... it affects your beliefs, your ideology, like your behavior, your environment, like just the way that a cult works," she says on **'s *The Awardist* podcast. "If we take away the darkness of that word, it's just a conditioning program that creates community."

It's in that moment that she realizes she is putting a positive spin on the religion she was born into, calling it a "community."

"This is Mormonism for you in action. I can make it make sense," she acknowledges, laughing. "But I've studied the classical clinical definition of a cult and I feel like I was in one. And I feel like I'm still deconstructing, coming out of it.

In the three-part series, Gay investigates claims of crimes by the Church and speaks with other former Mormons about the alleged abuses they suffered — sexual, mental, and emotional — at the hands of other members, including two sisters' own father, which they claim were covered up by the Church, and one man looks back on the conversion therapy program he ran before eventually revealing that he, too, is gay.

Heather Gay on 'Surviving Mormonism'.

Gay says she was inspired to produce the show because of Leah Remini's Emmy-winning docuseries, *Scientology and the Aftermath*, where she and late former senior Scientology executive Mike Rinder spoke with former members about the abuses they claim to have suffered (the Church has denied any wrongdoing).

"I've been pitching it since I've been in front of any executive," she says. "It was an exact comparison. I thought, someone needs to do this for other people that have left the Church and don't have a platform, don't have a microphone, don't have an executive to push this project in front of. And it was a hard ball to get across the line. I'd been a housewife for a long time before we did this project, and I've been passionate about telling survivors' stories for a long time. And this one was personal to me because it was my very best friend who we had become estranged because of [my] criticisms of the church. And that seems absolutely bizarre, but that I think is an example of me walking through this process of hosting and listening to these stories."

Gay admits she was "absolutely" afraid of retaliation by the Mormon church.

"And more than the Church as this big giant force, I just knew that the trickle-down effect would affect my neighbors, my customers at my business, my children's friends, my children's teachers at school," she explains. "Everyone is adjacent to or Mormon here. I can't throw a stone without hurting someone's feelings if I criticize the Church. I love where I live. I love my children. I love my family. I love their teachers. I love my grocer. I love my butcher. I love my mailman. And I know a lot of them are on my side of the fence, but a lot of them aren't. And so you just have to be sensitive to that. You're living in the hornet's nest and you're taking a stick and swatting it."

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For everything Gay says she experienced — much of which began when she and her husband divorced and she, like other divorced women, was shunned but her husband wasn't — she admits it wasn't until making this show that she truly believed some of the stories she had heard through the years.

"It's embarrassing to say," she admits, "which is why I'm emotional talking about it and so passionate about it, because even I having written a book called *Bad Mormon*, having been publicly and visibly out of the Church with a lot of support, a lot of ex-Mormon support, a lot of fan support... even with all of that, I still found my belief system questioning survivors of abuse, questioning critics of the church and questioning everyone's statements of criticism rather than questioning the actual Church. Even now, I have to wrap my brain around it and sit there with these survivors and say, I can feel my Mormon brain clicking in and denying them and finding ways to make it make sense and ways to excuse the behaviors of the church and ways to forgive the systemic oppression and ways to elevate the patriarchy and make misogyny beautiful. I find my brain doing the work for the church — they don't even have to put pressure on me to do. I've heard criticisms my whole life and I've never believed them, and I chose not to believe them because to believe them was to put in question your entire identity and your entire life. And so I think that that's a battle of the cult mentality that is so pervasive and so damaging."

And yet, Mormonism is one of the fastest-growing religions in the world. Gay has a theory about why that hits close to home.

"Salt Lake City Housewives, first and foremost — we'll give a shout out to us," she says, laughing. "We're bringing this concept and this culture... There are wonderful aspects to it. The headline is families, conservative values, mom and dad at home around the dinner table, Norman Rockwell in this century. I think that's attractive and beautiful. Mormon wives [on social media] with babies and milking their own [cows] and making their own bread and creating laundry soap from lye. There's a beauty and a simplicity to this kind of religious conservative dream, and that has become popularized through TikTok and Instagram. If there is a religion built for Instagram, built for social media, it's Mormonism. We look and act great. We are performative on every level, which is why we make great reality television and why we can make what is an oppressive environment look so appealing."

Heather Gay on 'Surviving Mormonism'.

For all of the attractive qualities, though, Gay has heard firsthand the horrors some fellow former Mormons have experienced — and she applauds their bravery in sharing their stories on a large and public platform.

"I was there to not process my own shame of being part of this institution and being such a devout advocate — I was a missionary, I got people to change their lives, to leave their families, to join this church — I had to put aside my role in all of it to hear their stories," she says. "But I could not have been prepared to hear Lizzie talking to her dad about the fact that he was no longer raping her and how that must be better for her and her life. The courage that would take... taped phone calls of a victim and a survivor confronting her accuser, I think, was so powerful and really so brave of her and I just think showed what a survivor she was. Can you imagine having the grit to do that?"

***Check out more from EW's *****The Awardist*****, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis, and our podcast diving into all the highlights from the year's best in TV, movies, and more.***

You can listen to Gay's full interview on *The Awardist*, where she also looks back on some past moments from *The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City*, reveals whether she has spoken with former Housewife Jen Shah, who was recently released from prison, and gives an update on Mary Cosby, whose son recently died after openly showing his struggles with drug addiction on the Bravo series.

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