Note: This story contains spoilers from “The White Lotus” Season 3, Episode 3.
Just as quickly Carrie Coon’s Laurie found herself as the odd one out on her girls trip with Leslie Bibb’s Kate and Michelle Monaghan’s Jaclyn, “The White Lotus” Season 3 shifted the trios dynamics with a Trump bombshell.
In Episode 3, religion is brought up while the trio is at dinner, and Jaclyn and Laurie are shocked to learn that Kate goes to church every weekend in Austin, leading them to ask Kate if conversations ever get awkward when discussing politics, given the likelihood that her fellow churchgoers voted for Trump. Kate reveals she’s an independent and when asked point-blank if she voted for Trump, Kate looks at the other two women and asks, “Are we really gonna talk about Trump tonight?”
“Mike doesn’t shy away from anything,” Coon told TheWrap of discussing Trump on the show. “Mike’s work is always transgressive and always pushing conversations that people don’t necessarily want to have about themselves where they sit inside of a thorny question, and that’s just something Mike has always done in his work and he continues to do that and will continue to push that envelop.”
Bibb added that White crafts these moments “without judgement,” saying “he somehow rides this center line.” “There’s no good guy or bad guy,” Coon added, noting that the work is “provocative.”
While the previous night ended with Jaclyn and Kate talking about Laurie’s struggles, including a drinking problem, by the end of Episode 3 Kate finds herself as the odd one out as Laurie and Jaclyn discuss their shock at the revelation.
“Everybody feels left out!” Coon said. “Isn’t that the Instagram problem? Isn’t everybody looking and thinking everyone is living their best life and that you’re the only one who’s not? Well, the joke is that that’s how everybody feels … and that’s the lesson too.”
“They all shift it,” Bibb said. “There’s a moment where Kate feels left out from them and knows it’s happening. She’s incredibly insecure — she wants to fit in with them. Their approval means everything, and I feel like it’s very important for her for this vacation to go. I don’t think she’s ready for this band to break up.
Below, Coon and Bibb reveal how they relate to their characters and if the trio loves or hates each other.
TheWrap: Jaclyn’s fame definitely makes for some interesting power dynamics with the girls. What do Laurie and Kate make of Jaclyn and what are their biggest gripes with her?
Bibb: Kate loves it. I think Kate just wants to impress Jaclyn so much — she wants to impress both of them. Their opinion of her matters very much, but it’s very exciting to have a famous friend for Kate — she loves it. It’s kind of like my mom when I got my first big television show, and my mom was so excited, so the root for Kate was my mother, in that sense that she really, really loved it, but also, too, it can get to be a pain in the ass.
Coon: Laurie pretends like she’s above it. Laurie thinks it’s her responsibility to make sure Jaclyn doesn’t get too big for her britches, which is like how my family is — it’s weird for them, you know? And so she pretend that it’s not meaningful. When you have an old friend, you know everything about them — you know their flaws — and the public isn’t the necessarily trafficking in Jaclyn flaws, and there’s a claim to intimacy when you know that person better than anyone’s really good, and that their public life doesn’t actually look like what their life looks like. We know that hypocrisy, because we know Jaclyn, but we’re not really talking about it.
Carrie, Laurie feels like the most grounded and real of this group, and feels a bit more isolated with Kate and Jaclyn. How does playing her compare to being a bigger part of the ensemble than some other roles you’ve played?
Coon: I’m from the Chicago theater — It’s all ensemble. No one’s there to stand out. Everyone’s there to tell the story; no one’s getting famous. I love ensemble work — it’s my favorite work to do, honestly, and I understand left out waiting to happen. I’m a middle child and so that part of Laurie, I have so much tenderness for and I love that we definitely sought out choices that felt a little bit wrong — like nail color not quite right, clothes not quite right. She was hapless in her packing — she’s not in a very good place in her life right now and really having some identity trouble, identity crisis. And she’s an alcoholic, and that’s how she’s choosing to deal with things, so therefore, she’s living a very unexamined life and she’s not going to be able to get away with that with these people that she’s known her whole life.
It’s hard to tell if the women love or hate each other. How do you see it?
Coon: It’s a fine line. The people who love you the most can hurt you the most. It’s like family — they are like family with everything that means. Whether or not you think the friendship survives says more about the viewer than it does about the performances.
Bibb: Don’t you find that we lash out most at the people closest to you? It’s strange that we do that, and I think there’s something with this dynamic with the three of them — they can really go at it with each other and it can get very messy.
Coon: And in Buddhism, it’s called comparing mind — we are inclined to compare ourselves to other people, and that is a source of pain always, because you always find yourself greater than or less than and either position that puts you in this made up place is a source of pain for you and other people. That’s where the suffering comes from and Mike’s put us in a Buddhist country for a reason.
Bibb: He’s really looking at spirituality with this season and mirrors … he’s really holding it up to everybody.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
“The White Lotus” airs Sundays on HBO and Max.
