As exhibited by final week’s episode, which featured the Ratliff brothers (Patrick Schwarzenegger and Sam Nivola) getting a bit too intimate with each other, Mike White has by no means been afraid to go there with “The White Lotus.” Nevertheless, talking in a latest interview with Harper’s Bazaar, one of many present stars of the present, Carrie Coon, shared that a few of her character’s backstory was minimize away on account of the present political local weather in America and all over the world.
“There was a bit extra context to her house life. You initially came upon that her daughter was really non-binary, possibly trans, and going by they/them,” stated Coon. “You see Laurie struggling to clarify it to her associates, struggling to make use of they/them pronouns, combating the language, which was all attention-grabbing.”
Coon defined that it was a “quick scene,” however it did present context to her battle with pal Kate (Leslie Bibb) revealing herself to be a Trump supporter in episode 3 of this season. Although the season was written earlier than the election, as soon as Trump gained, White realized it could be too main a topic to deal with in only a referential second.
“Contemplating the best way the Trump administration has weaponized the cultural battle towards transgender individuals much more since then,” Coon stated, “when the time got here to chop the episode down, Mike felt that the scene was so small and the subject so massive that it wasn’t the suitable method to have interaction in that dialog.”
This will likely seem to be a cop-out and a method of avoiding getting caught up within the present assault on the trans neighborhood, however Coon doesn’t imagine the selection has something to do with White’s willingness to interact in vital dialogues.
“His father wrote a really influential e-book about what it was like to return out as a homosexual man himself within the evangelical church as an grownup, which quite a lot of younger males have learn and was a really significant textual content for them in their very own journeys,” she instructed Harper’s Bazaar. “So Mike doesn’t draw back from difficult cultural conversations, and I actually respect that about his work.”
“The White Lotus” airs Sunday nights at 9pm ET on HBO and streams on Max on the identical time.