The White Lotus creator Mike White has stunned fans after disclosing a scene that almost made it into the show.
HBO’s hit series has drawn to a close after a divisive third season, concluding with an episode that dramatically revealed which characters didn’t make it out of Thailand alive.
White, who is already teasing the location of the fourth season, has now reflected on season three in the aftermath of the finale – and he’s shared the revelation that two characters who never met on the show were originally set to have a sex scene together.
Speaking on the official White Lotus season three podcast, White said that he wrote a scene in which Piper Ratliff (Sarah Catherine Hook) lost her virginity to Zion Lindsey (Nicholas Duvernay), the son of Belinda (Natasha Rothwell).
However, due to the finale being so packed with other plot points, he cut the scene altogether. It would have occurred after Piper’s realisation that she didn’t want to do a year-long sabbatical in a nearby monastery – the reason for the family’s trip in the first instance.
“The part that was cut too, which is very disappointing, is that she decides to lose her virginity in the script in the last episode – and she actually has sex with Zion,” White told podcast hosts Jia Tolentino and Josh Bearman.
White continued: ‘There’s a whole scene where she’s like, ‘It’s true – Saxon’s right about this one thing. I need to get this over with.’ And you know, like after she leaves the monastery, she’s just like, ‘I need to...’ You know, ‘I need to, like, have sex.’”
The original scene would have shown her “scoping the restaurant” before spotting Zion.
‘It was just like one of these things where it was like... you know, it’s an hour and a half already. And it would have added, like, 10 minutes to the thing,” the show’s writer and director said.
The scene would have been a nod to the speculation surrounding her sex life by her brothers Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) and Lochlan (Sam Nivola) earlier in the season.
White said he envisioned it as bringing “a romantic rom-com vibe in the middle of like, you know, trying to kill the family with the... with the pong pong fruits”.
In the finale, the Ratliff family narrowly avoided being killed by patriarch Tim (Jason Isaacs), who plans to poison his family to save them from financial ruin when they return home.
However, he changes his mind at the last moment.
“It just felt like I was trying to do too much, you know, narratively,” White added.
