The White Lotus doesn't really shy away from any topic, no matter how taboo. I mean, this season even had an incest threesome! But there is, apparently, one topic that creator Mike White cut from season 3 of The White Lotus after the election.
“You originally found out that her daughter was actually non-binary, maybe trans, and going by they/them,” star Carrie Coon, who plays Laurie, revealed in an interview with Harper's Bazar. In the final cut, all we know about Laurie is that she's divorced, struggling at work, and has a daughter, but the original story was a bit more complex.
“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 said. “It was 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.”
According to the actor, the scene, which was written before the 2024 election, was cut in editing after Trump took office, not because Mike wanted to shy away from the topic, but because he felt it was too important.
“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 explained.
While this subplot would have given a bit more depth to Laurie's backstory, and it does make her monologue in the finale make even more sense, I think Mike made the right call on this one. Trump's attacks on the transgender community seem to increase by the day, and all of that would have given new context to Laurie and Kate's friendship. It could have made audiences judge Laurie and question why she wouldn't confront Kate about her vote, which clearly wasn't the intention. And, if it never came up again, it would have felt tone deaf. Better save it for season 4.
