If you’re still hungry for more after The White Lotus’s season-three finale, you can always scour the cutting-room floor. Writer-director Mike White told the Hollywood Reporter some of his episodes originally came in at an hour and 40 minutes before getting cut down to the tight hours that aired. (Meanwhile, the 90-minute finale was originally shot as two and a half hours, per star Patrick Schwarzenegger.) “As a writer, I got a little indulged,” White said. Luckily, some of the show’s stars have been revealing their cut moments, including bigger conversations and more fantasies. So, what else did we miss out on this season (other than a bangin’ theme song)? Below, all the deleted scenes the stars of White Lotus season three have spoken about.
Laurie revealed her kid is nonbinary
The surprise that Kate (may have) voted for Donald Trump originally carried much higher stakes. Carrie Coon told Harper’s Bazaar that, earlier in the season, Laurie shared that her kid is nonbinary. “You see Laurie struggling to explain it to her friends, struggling to use they/them pronouns, struggling with the language, which was all interesting,” she said. That then made Kate’s conversation about Trump “so much more provocative and personally offensive to Laurie,” Coon added. However, White later cut the scene because it was “too political, or too far, or too distracting,” Coon told the Hollywood Reporter. White added to the Hollywood Reporter he didn’t want that detail to “overwhelm” his messaging. “It felt right in March of last year,” he said. “Now, there’s a vibe shift.”
Kate had an “insane dream sequence”
Leslie Bibb also told the Hollywood Reporter about a fantastical scene with Kate that got left on the cutting-room floor. “Kate had this insane dream sequence with the ladyboys and ping-pong and everything was glowing,” she said. “It was also kind of like The Shining.” When? Why? Could it have led to Kate checking out of the White Lotus with new politics? We can only dream of that.
Jaclyn had more to prove at the club
The women Jaclyn eyed while dancing in the club with the Russian men originally played a bigger role in that scene. Michelle Monaghan told Bustle those same women saw the trio of friends at the bar earlier, when they looked “like drowned rats” after getting soaked on the street. “They’re pointing fingers and laughing at them,” Monaghan said. “And Jaclyn was like, Oh, hell no. We’re going downstairs.”
Saxon had a bigger final moment with Chelsea
At one point, Saxon’s emotional look at Chelsea reuniting with Rick on the beach was much more eventful. “I actually played a version of that scene where it’s full come-to-Jesus, where Saxon is just so sweet to the girls,” Schwarzenegger told Variety. But White quickly decided that wasn’t right. “He didn’t want some huge change for Saxon yet — just a small moment and to hold on my face as I watch her go off into the distance,” Schwarzenegger continued.
Lochlan talked to his dad about tsunamis
Yeah, we missed out on more tsunami talk. Sam Nivola shared that, in a longer version of Tim Ratliff’s conversation with Lochlan about living without money, Jason Isaacs’s character asked Lochlan about the book he was reading. “And I’m like, I’m reading this book about tsunamis, and fucking 300,000 people died, or however many it was,” Nivola told Deadline. “How do you find any meaning in life when it can all just change like that on a dime? Which I think was a cool way of describing the turmoil that he’s going through.” But that metaphor was lost on a drugged-out Tim. “And then Timothy says, What if money doesn’t matter? or something,” Nivola continued. “And I’m like, Okay, I don’t see how that’s related to what I just said, and he is just totally thinking about his own thing.”
And at one point, Lochlan was in a body bag
But not to leave the resort. Nivola also revealed that during his character’s near-death experience, after accidentally making a suicide-fruit smoothie, he had a fantasy of escaping one of the show’s iconic body bags. “And that was so scary, because I had to be zipped in a body bag with no air, and then unzip myself,” he told Deadline.
Chelsea and Saxon got closer than we think
RELEASE THE CUT SCENES @hbomax pic.twitter.com/vdU3aWEx98
— daily aimee lou wood (@dailyaimeelou) April 4, 2025
We may never know what happened before this picture.
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From Laurie’s revelation about her kid to Saxon’s moment with Chelsea.
