In short, President Donald Trump ruins everything.
Carrie Coon, who plays Laurie in Season 3 of the “White Lotus,” told Harper’s Bazaar in an interview published last week that there was a small but significant detail about her character’s backstory that was cut after Trump was elected.
In the show, Laurie is an unhappy corporate lawyer from New York. Not much is known about her personal life other than she’s recently divorced and has a teenage daughter who may be acting out.
“There was a bit more context to her home life,” Coon said of Laurie. “You originally found out that her daughter was actually nonbinary, 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.”
In Episode 3, Laurie and her friend, Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), are surprised to discover that their lifelong friend, Kate (Leslie Bibb), has very different values than they do now. In a dinner scene, Kate, who now lives in Texas, reveals to Laurie and Jaclyn, who are liberal and live in New York City and Los Angeles, respectively, that she attends church regularly and many of her friends are conservative. This causes Laurie to ask Kate if she voted for Trump. In response, Kate makes a telling facial expression that implies that she likely did.
“Are we really going to talk about Trump tonight?” Kate asks her friends before swiftly changing the subject.
In response, Laurie and Jaclyn also sweep the issue under the rug, but share glances with one another that imply that they think Kate is out of her mind.