Spoiler alert! This story discusses The White Lotus episode “Killer Instincts,” from March 30. The episode is available to stream with a Max subscription if you’re not caught up.
With just one episode to go before The White Lotus Season 3’s run on the 2025 TV schedule comes to an end, fans are going crazy with theories about who the shooter is and who dies. Meanwhile, I find myself getting so caught up in the too-real female friendship between Jaclyn, Laurie and Kate. Carrie Coon delved into why many women like myself can relate to the trio, and it’s almost sad how right she is.
In “Killer Instincts,” passive aggression and backhanded compliments finally gave way to full-on rage, particularly between Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan) and Laurie (Carrie Coon), after Jaclyn’s affair with resort employee Valentin. Even Kate (Leslie Bibb) got caught in the crossfire. Coon told Harper’s Bazaar that this story resonates with viewers because an understanding of female friendships is “the one piece of the puzzle that everybody has some relationship to.” She continued:
We'd be lying if we say we've never been in those situations. You'd have to have a lot of integrity to never gossip. I actually don't have a close group of female friends from my childhood. That's just not the way my life unfolded. So that part was actually quite far from my own experience—questioning how much of a friendship is history and force of habit and how much is actual shared interest.
Personally, I feel so exposed watching this story play out, because I see similarities between the characters and my own (less toxic) girlfriends, where we all grew up together but these days interact almost exclusively in a group chat. I couldn’t help but compare what was happening on The White Lotus to our own rare reunions, thinking, “Ha! That’s exactly how that would happen,” while hoping really hard that we’re not nearly as catty.
Carrie Coon said that kind of comparison — regardless of gender — is human nature. She continued:
And we're all women in our 40s, reflecting and questioning our life choices. I think middle age is tricky in that way. You can't help but compare yourself to other people. We have brains built on comparison. And you're right, it's not gendered. Everybody's engaging in that because everyone is comparing themselves to others and performing ‘self’ on some level. In this Instagram and TikTok culture, everyone is feeling like they're the odd man out. Kate occupies a rarefied air in her own small community, but doesn't really matter outside of it. Jaclyn is lonely. And Lori [sic] pretends to not be interested in Jaclyn's fame, but in fact she's really jealous of her success, and maybe she thinks, 'Why not me?' So the storyline is really forcing us all to consider what this performance of self is getting us, you know?
The issues that drive the tension between the women are likely topics that many of us have discussed in one way or another with our own friends: Laurie gets upset that Jaclyn cheated on her husband; Kate gets confronted over voting for Trump; and Laurie becomes the topic of gossip over how much she’s drinking. Carrie Coon spoke to how she chose to make Laurie relatable through that storyline, saying:
It was definitely in the text. They talk about her drinking being problematic, and it was also often scripted in our scenes that they were drinking. But I made a choice to make sure she was always drinking and that she always had one glass half gone and another one on the way. That's how she's vacationing. Her life is falling apart, and she's not being honest about it. And, geez, how many people are moving through the world that way?
This friendship story may not be the most salacious plotline of The White Lotus Season 3 — what with all the brotherly love, the reappearance of Greg (sorry, “Gary”), and that Internet-breaking monologue from Sam Rockwell — but I have little doubt that, sadly, Laurie, Jaclyn and Kate’s story is the most relatable.
Tune into the season finale to see how it all ends at 9 p.m. ET Sunday, April 6, on HBO and streaming on Max.
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