Alright HBO, listen up. Carrie Coon has spilled the beans (literally) on just how much gold The White Lotus was left on the cutting room floor, and now we’re collectively demanding a director’s cut. Preferably yesterday.
In a series of interviews, Coon spilled the tea on just how much material didn’t make it into the final episodes. “Most of the scenes with the women were some of the longest in the scripts,” she told The Unwrapped Podcast.
“[Series creator Mike White] loves these women, and we would just sit around the table and talk and talk. That dinner scene from last night? Probably twice as long as what you see in the show”. Twice as long! Imagine all the passive-aggressive digs and existential crises we missed out on.
According to Coon, a lot of “rich character stuff” was cut, not because it wasn’t good enough, but because of time constraints. She explained, “One of the scenes from [episode seven] was literally cut in half. So much of the material is gone, and that’s just what happens when you’re making TV.”
Among the casualties? Leslie Bibb’s monologue about pickleball — yes, pickleball — which was tragically axed. “She had a whole monologue about pickleball,” Coon revealed.
“And a whole dream sequence of Kate that never made it to air.” Honestly, how are we supposed to move on knowing this?
Then there’s what fans are now calling “the bean scene”. Apparently, this turned into an improv free-for-all between Coon, Bibb, and Michelle Monaghan.
“Mike just let the bean stuff — he was like, ‘And now Laurie, say you love medium beans!’ He just wanted more beans in prestige TV,” Coon shared. Mike White is truly a visionary.
But it wasn’t all quirky moments that got scrapped. Some deeper storylines were also left behind. In a March interview with Harper’s Bazaar, Coon revealed that her character Laurie was originally written to have a non-binary child. This detail added significant weight to her interactions with Kate (Leslie Bibb), especially when Kate hinted at voting for Donald Trump.
“You see Laurie grappling with how to explain it to her friends, struggling to utilise they/them pronouns… which was intriguing,” she said. However, White ultimately decided to cut this storyline because he felt it was “too political, or too far, or too distracting”.
The finale itself was originally much longer too, with Coon confirming multiple endings were shot and that some of her own material tied to those endings didn’t make it in.
“The director’s cut maybe will come out on Blu-ray!” Coon told Variety.
One scene that did make it into the finale — and went instantly viral — was Laurie’s sprint away from gunfire during Rick’s dramatic bridge showdown. The frantic dash wasn’t scripted; it was all Coon’s idea. “I thought, ‘What would a person do?’ A person would fucking run,” she said.
“Look, I’m an American and I’m a New Yorker — if you think I don’t know where the exits are in any building I’m in, then you’re not paying attention to the news”.
And in a scene she called “the heart of the season”, Coon opened up about filming Laurie’s emotional monologue at their final dinner together.
She explained that while there was pressure leading up to such a pivotal moment, her real-life bond with Bibb and Monaghan made it easier to deliver an authentic performance. “There was so much about our real lives in it,” she said.
“We were coming to the end of our experience together… It was very easy to call upon gratitude”.
So here we are: knowing there’s hours of unseen footage — more beans, more pickleball, more heartbreak — locked away somewhere at HBO HQ. If there’s any justice in this world, they’ll release an extended cut soon. Until then, we’ll be over here imagining what could’ve been.
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