The White Lotus edit: Carrie Coon reveals show cut non-binary character reference after Trump elected

The White Lotus actor Carrie Coon has revealed the HBO series cut out a reference to a non-binary character after the election of Donald Trump.

The social satire is on its third season and this instalment features a group of characters made up of three forty-something women reuniting for a girls trip. The women met as children but their adult friendship is clearly strained.

Played by Coon, Michelle Monaghan and Leslie Bibb, the trio have spent the season in a shifting dynamic where one of the three is always on the outs with the other two.

In one memorable exchange, Coon and Monaghan’s characters, who live in New York City and Los Angeles respectively, discover that Bibb’s Texas-residing character may have voted for Trump. The bi-coastal duo are horrified and stand in judgment.

However, the scene might’ve had a more loaded resonance in the original version.

In an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, Coon revealed, “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,” she said.

“It was only a short scene, but for me, if did make the question (in episode three) 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 weaponised the cultural war against transgender people even more since then, when the time came to cut the episode down, (creator, writer and director) Mike (White) felt that the scene was so small and the topic so big that it wasn’t the right way to engage in that conversation.”

The White Lotus is one week away from the its season finale with the big mystery of who dies and who’s doing the shooting still to be solved.

The White Lotus is streaming on Binge and Max