‘The White Lotus’: Leslie Bibb Reveals That Trump Scene Was Written in 2022 and Explains Why Mike White ‘Writes Great Women’
"The White Lotus" star Leslie Bibb revealed that the latest episode's scene discussing Trump was written in 2022, making it "randomly current."
SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for Season 3, Episode 3 of “The White Lotus,” now streaming on Max.
For a tight-knit group of women like Kate (Leslie Bibb), Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan) and Laurie (Carrie Coon), taking a trip to Thailand is the perfect opportunity to escape reality for a little while and unplug. But in classic Mike White and “The White Lotus” fashion, the world around them always seeps its way back into the interpersonal dynamics of the characters.
It’s in the “in-between spaces” of the seemingly meaningless conversations, Bibb tells Variety, that the true comparisons and insecurities arise among these three long-time friends. During a pivotal dinner scene in the latest episode of Season 3, things get less subtle: the topic of politics — specifically, Donald Trump! — comes up as the women begin talking about religion and the traditional role of women in Christianity.
After all, this trip is also about playing catch-up on their lives. So when Kate reveals to her friends that she still goes to church after having moved to Austin, Texas, Jaclyn and Laurie begin questioning her. How is she able to be around such conservative values all the time and not feel uncomfortable? “They’re nice people. Really good families,” Kate says.
Popular on VarietyWhen her friends pry some more, Kate reveals that while her husband is a Republican, she votes independent. When Laurie asks Kate if she voted for Trump, Kate smiles and simply says: “Are we really gonna talk about Trump tonight?”
Kate’s non-answer answer says it all.
Bibb reveals that White actually wrote the scene back in 2022, since the season was originally set to be filmed in January 2023 before the SAG-AFTRA strike happened. Now that the episode is dropping in the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election, it takes on new significance.
“When we were filming it, it actually felt like it was going to be irrelevant,” Bibb says. “It’s randomly current. I think it’s so easy to be divisive, and it felt like Mike — not that he wasn’t picking a side — was just showing that not everybody’s a villain. She wasn’t going to ruin this holiday over who she voted for.”
Courtesy of Fabio Lovino/HBOWhen prepping for the scene, Bibb couldn’t think about how people might react to a hot-button issue such as Trump because “then I’m putting the cart before the horse. I love Kate, and I didn’t judge her. I love how she can never have silence, she doesn’t want to ruin anything, she always wants to keep this group together.”
Holding onto this friendship for Kate — or “Kate Careful,” as Bibb dubbed her during filming — is everything for the character, because “they’re her oxygen.” So when politics comes up, something that could so easily divide the friendship more than the toxicity that’s already brewing under the surface, Kate immediately deflects and pulls back.
“With these two women, they make her feel cooler than she is,” Bibb says. “She’s so worried about [her move to] Austin being perfect, she’s kind of bored and doesn’t really have a purpose. It’s all about the husband and it’s all about the kids — she feels very held tight. There’s something about these women that makes her feel like she has a purpose.”
She gives all the credit to White for writing “great female characters,” and says that working on “The White Lotus” marked a first for her — getting every script of the season before cameras started rolling.
“I don’t think a lot of times in television you get the opportunity to flesh out characters the way Mike fleshes them out,” Bibb says. “And that might just be the nature of the luxury that he has to write all the episodes — we shot for six months. There’s something about the model for shooting ‘The White Lotus’ that I feel is conducive for the work.”
With the split nature of the country following November’s presidential election, Bibb believes that this dinner scene speaks to the ongoing fractures that are currently affecting relationships. It ends with no real resolution, as Kate returns to drinking and smiling, with everybody instantly trying to forget that the conversation they just had ever took place.
“[Everything] feels so divisive, and yet we’re not,” Bibb says. “I mean, they’re all sort of passionate women and have these feelings, all with different stances, but there’s some tether between them. You don’t have to throw the baby out with the bath water just because of their political views.”
At the tail end of the episode, though, it’s now Kate on the outside of the friend group as as she overhears Jaclyn and Laurie talking in disbelief about Kate’s political views. “As a woman, it’s just so self-defeating,” Laurie says. In that moment, Kate recognizes that this isn’t a topic that everybody is going to easily gloss over — a realization that registers squarely on Bibb’s face.
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