Not many people would accuse The White Lotus of avoiding political commentary – Leslie Bibb’s character shocks her friends by refusing to reveal whether or not she voted for Donald Trump in the 2024 election, for instance.
But according to actor Carrie Coon, who plays Laurie in the most recent season of the show, her character’s child’s trans storyline was cut following the current president’s re-election.
Sharing that director Mike White “doesn’t shy away from challenging cultural conversations,” she nonetheless says there was “a bit more context to her [character’s] home life” than the show’s creators thought fit to air after his win.
Speaking to Harper’s Bazaar, the actor shared that in the original script, her character’s “daughter was actually non-binary, maybe trans, and going by they/them.”
“You see Laurie struggling to explain it to her friends, struggling to use they/them pronouns, struggling with the language, which was all interesting,” she continued.
Though the scene was just “short,” Carrie said it added another layer to her character’s response to Kate voting for Trump.
But the storyline, which was written before Trump’s election, was deemed insufficient afterwards.
“Considering the way the Trump administration has weaponised 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,” Carrie shared.
“Mike White grew up in the evangelical church. He grew up in some pretty specific communities, some of which were maybe not as welcoming to him, ultimately,” Carrie told the publication after the interviewer asked her whether Kate was meant to “challenge” perceptions of Trump voters.
“His father wrote a very influential book about what it was like to come out as a gay man himself in the evangelical church as an adult, which a lot of young men have read and was a very meaningful text for them in their own journeys,” she said.
“That’s why it’s fun to watch Mike’s characters. They’re not just one thing.”