Carrie Coon Opens Up about the Queer Meme Cut from 'The White Lotus'

On "The White Lotus," there have been plenty of queer memes – from the famous rimming scene that helped establish the career of Lukas Gage on Season One, to the murdering gays out to get Jennifer Coolidge on Season Two, and, on the current season, the drug-induced intimacy between brothers Patrick Schwarzenegger and Sam Nivola.

But, according to Carrie Coon, there was one topic that ended on the cutting room floor: Gender identity.

This occurred in a conversation between the three high school friends – Laurie (Coon), Kate (Leslie Bibb), and Lyn (Michelle Monaghan), who have come to the Thai branch of titular resort to catch up after years apart. Each fills in on their past – Lyn has become an instantly recognizable television star (whose largesse paid for the vacation) with a much-younger himbo husband she suspects is cheating on her. Laurie has become a Trump-voting Texan, much to the surprise of her besties. And Laurie is a divorced New York lawyer with a teenage daughter, a career in flux, and a drinking problem.

But of the three, Laurie is the one with the least amount of context. And one reason is that series creator Mike White (who nicknamed the trio The Blonde Blob) cut a scene that had Laurie opening up about her teenage daughter, who defines herself as non-binary.

In an interview with Harper's Bazaar, Coon explains: "There was a bit more context to her home life. You originally found out that her 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. 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. But the season was written before the election. And 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."

Coon feels that White's decision was one rooted in what was best for his narrative, and not prompted by outside influences. "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. 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. So Mike doesn't shy away from challenging cultural conversations, and I really appreciate that about his work."