The White Lotus star Carrie Coon has revealed that the show had cut a mention of her character’s non-binary child after the election of US president Donald Trump.
In an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, Coon addressed a scene from its latest season, which showed Coon’s Laurie discussing politics with childhood friends Kate (played by Leslie Bibb) and Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan) while on vacation in Thailand – the scene would reveal the political friction they never knew they had, particularly between Coon’s liberal character and Bibb’s right-leaning one.
Coon revealed in the interview that the scene was originally meant to give more context to Laurie’s home life.
“You originally found out that her daughter was actually non-binary, maybe trans, and going by they/them,” she said.
“You see Laurie struggling to explain it to her friends, struggling to use they/them pronouns, struggling with the language, which was all interesting.” It was added to intensify the friction between Laurie and Kate, whose support for Donald Trump would imply endorsing his policies, which has included one that only recognises “two genders”.
“It was only a short scene, but for me, it did make the question [in episode 3] of whether Kate voted for Trump so much more provocative and personally offensive to Laurie, considering who her child is in the world,” Coon explained.
She then added that the season was written before Trump’s election, and the event affected the way the show’s creator Mike White wanted to approach the scene.
“Considering the way the Trump administration has weaponized the cultural war against transgender people even more since then, when the time came to cut the episode down, Mike felt that the scene was so small and the topic so big that it wasn’t the right way to engage in that conversation,” she elaborated.
Season three of The White Lotus, a soap opera-esque drama that focuses on a different cast each season, is currently airing – this time, featuring Coon, Bibb and Monaghan alongside Parker Posey, BLACKPINK‘s Lisa, Walter Goggins, Jason Isaacs, and more.
However, it also features the return of season one’s Belinda (played by Natasha Rothwell) and Gary (Jon Gries), continuing a storyline that ran through the first two seasons around Tanya, the doomed socialite played by Jennifer Coolidge. Each season features a mysterious death, and season three’s one began with gunfire that happened off-camera.
Last week, Monaghan debunked the theory that the shooting was done by the tropical resort’s residential monkeys. “Guys, the monkeys did not do it!” she told the audience at Jimmy Kimmel Live. “People have gone ape shit thinking that”.