Carrie Coon revealed in an interview that her character on The White Lotus season 3 — the unanimous fan-favorite Laurie Duffy — was originally written as having a “nonbinary, maybe trans” child. But, according to the actress, scenes referencing the gender identity of Laurie’s kid were edited out of the series after Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election and returned to the White House in 2025.
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Coon, who’s been delivering the performance of a lifetime on The White Lotus, is one of the biggest breakout stars of season 3 of the hit HBO series from showrunner Mike White. It is also notable that Coon’s character, Laurie, has been even more embraced by queer viewers of the show.
In a new interview with Harper’s Bazaar, Coon praised Mike White for exploring “transgressive” themes in his writing and remarked on how the showrunner “doesn’t shy away from challenging cultural conversations.” When asked later in the interview if Laurie’s backstory was purposely kept vague — given how little viewers know about her job, her husband, their ongoing divorce, and her daughter — Coon responded:
“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.”
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“It was only a short scene,” Coon continued. “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. But the season was written before the election.”
The actress then shared her perspective on why the results of the 2024 presidential election played a role in White’s decision to edit out any references to Laurie’s child being “nonbinary” or “maybe trans” over the course of season 3. “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.
HBO’s The White Lotus season 3 drops new episodes every Sunday on Max.
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