‘White Lotus’ Friendships Get Tested by a Trump Vote Reveal
Among the White Lotus season three ensemble of Thailand vacationers is a trio of complicated friends played by Leslie Bibb, Carrie Coon and Michelle Monaghan.
Reuniting for a girls trip at the White Lotus: Thailand, Laurie (Coon) and Kate (Bibb) flank their TV star friend Jaclyn (Monaghan) in Mike White’s most spiritual entry of the HBO series. Now three episodes in, each friend has found themselves on the receiving end of being gossiped about by the other two, with this week’s episode putting Kate (Bibb) on the outs after she revealed that, not only is she no longer a Democrat, she voted for Donald Trump in the presidential election.
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During a dinner scene at the hotel, the three women discuss their thoughts on the wellness resort, and talk soon turns to spirituality and religion. Jaclyn, who hails from Hollywood, knocks Christianity and most religions for being male-centered, but Kate pipes in to say that she actually loves going to her church in Austin, Texas.
It comes as a surprise to her oldest friends that Kate now goes to church on Sundays. Jaclyn and Laurie, an attorney who lives in New York, want to know how she handles all of the conservative “bible-thumpers” she’s surrounded by now, is it weird for her?
“If I was just around a bunch of Texans who voted for Trump, I guess I would just feel alienated,” says Jaclyn. “But do you ever talk politics with them. Doesn’t it get awkward?” pushes Laurie.
When Kate doesn’t seem to understand their point, they realize something about their friend.
“Wait… are you a Republican?” asks Laurie, after throwing a look to Jaclyn.
“No,” laughs Kate. “I’m an independent. But Dave [her husband] is.”
Jaclyn and Laurie are surprised and Laurie wants to know, “You didn’t vote for Trump though, did you?”
Kate doesn’t verbally answer. Instead she makes a face that says it all and asks them, “Are we really gonna talk about Trump tonight?”
Though the White Lotus filmed season three in 2024, the timely scene was written by creator White in 2022, Bibb confirmed to Variety. (Filming on the season was delayed by the 2023 Hollywood strikes.) Bibb told EW that when they filmed it, Trump wasn’t even running for reelection yet. “I feel like Mike had binoculars into the future because when we did it, it just didn’t feel [timely anymore],” Bibb said. “I was like, ‘We already did that. That was in the past.’ I don’t even think Trump was running when we did it — it was in January or February of last year or something, so yeah, that was pretty wild.”
This isn’t the first time the women have been divided and it won’t be the last as season three continues to challenge their friendships, which Monaghan recently described as having a lot of “ooey, gooey, juicy cringe” that makes for great television. “The trio always had a victim, a perpetrator and a peacekeeper. That shifting dynamic keeps shifting from each and every scene,” she previously told THR.
White, in comments released by HBO, said he was inspired to create the BFF trio after observing female friendships on vacation. “I had this idea of three friends that are almost interchangeable at the beginning,” said White. “They’re all blondes. They all have this voluble, excitable energy. And then you start to see how they’re all just slightly different, and the differences start to really unravel their time there together.”
He continued, “I just remember that there have been times where I’ve been on vacations, and you’d see women friends together, and you were just like, ‘I can’t really get a vibe of what’s going on?’ And then one would leave and the other two would start talking. They’re triangulating in some way. And so there’s some of that in the early episodes. But it’s this sense of sameness and then focusing on the differences, and how you have to justify your life to certain types of people that have that history with you.”
The third episode, meanwhile, ends with Kate waking up at night and hearing her friends quietly gossiping about their revealing dinner conversation.
“She’s always been like this. Always taking on the attitude of the person she’s with,” she hears her friends whispering. They were trying to kick each other under the dinner table: “I mean Trump! Are you insane?” asks Laurie. Jaclyn says Kate always lets the person she’s with call the shots. Meanwhile, neither of them could imagine living in Texas (“as a woman, it’s just so self-defeating, right?”) Well, people get more conservative the older they get, they conclude.
That’s when Kate has heard enough, and she heads back inside for another day of paradise.
New episodes of The White Lotus release Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO and Max. Head here for THR‘s interview with returning star Natasha Rothwell on episode three.
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