The White Lotus star Carrie Coon has revealed that a non-binary character who used they / them pronouns got cut from the show by creator Mike White when Donald Trump won the election and returned as president of the United States. Carrie Coon went into detail about the cut character after season three of The White Lotus had a political conversation where the three friends Laurie, Jaclyn and Kate (played by Coon, Michelle Monaghan and Leslie Bibb) discussed who they voted for and Kate refused to tell the group if she voted for Donald Trump or not. Now Carrie Coon has shed more light on the fact there was a non-binary character who got cut from The White Lotus season three in response to the tensions Donald Trump has raised since re-election he rolls back rights for transgender people in the US.
‘The administration has weaponised the cultural war against trans people’
Speaking to Harper’s Bazaar about what got cut, Carrie Coon opened up about how Donald Trump and his ghoulish administration affected The White Lotus and the planned non-binary character. “You originally found out that her daughter was actually nonbinary, maybe trans, and going by they/them,” Coon 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 only a short scene, but for me, it did make the question of whether Kate voted for Trump so much more provocative and personally offensive to Laurie, considering who her child is in the world,” Coon added.
The White Lotus season three was written before Trump won the presidency again, but creator Mike White had to make a decision on what to remove.
“The season was written before the election. And 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.”
Whilst I understand the decision, I can’t help but think that conversation might have done a lot of good. Having one of the most watched and talked about shows air a conversation like that could have been incredibly beneficial – although it could have also just enflamed the most unsavoury side of social media comment sections.
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