In the first two seasons of The White Lotus, creator Mike White has given us dysfunctional families, equally dysfunctional couples, and doomed singles (RIP Tanya McQuoid), but it wasn’t until season three debuted on February 16 that we got our first trio of women on a so-called girls trip. And not shockingly, the storyline with Laurie (Carrie Coon), Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan), and Kate (Leslie Bibb) is far and away the most fascinating the series has produced.
“I had this idea of three friends that are almost interchangeable at the beginning,” White says. “They’re all blondes. They all have this voluble, excitable energy and then you start to see how they’re all just slightly different and the differences start to really unravel their time there together.”
Case in point: from the beginning, we learn that Laurie, Jaclyn and Kate have been childhood besties since the age of nine; Jaclyn has gone on to become a famous Hollywood actress with a hot husband 10 years her junior; Laurie is a New York-based attorney, divorced and raising a difficult teen; and Kate now resides in Austin, Texas with her prominent husband, where she may or may not be eating the right foods for a healthy BMI. They’ve been separated by miles, but we’re made to believe their bond is as strong as ever.
To drive that point home, they shower each other with “I love you’s,” backhanded-but-sweet (I guess?) compliments, and surface-level exchanges. They explore The White Lotus property in perfectly curated wide-brimmed hats and colorful resort-wear. And above all, they are never without a large glass of wine.
Or, as Leslie Bibb tells me, “I was watching Real Housewives recently, and as I was watching these women, I was like, ‘Oh my God, they’re doing exactly what Mike [White] wrote here.’”
Except it’s not the Real Housewives, and if anything, the dynamic we’re seeing play out on The White Lotus is more grounded in reality than anything we’ve seen on reality TV. Take these exchanges, for instance:
“Look at you, your kids are gorgeous, your home is beautiful, you’re totally winning at life.”
“Who’s your doctor? Shut up!”
“Your daughter seems like she’s turning into a really cool girl.”
They’re not saying anything for shock value, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with these statements. But having always been fascinated by friendships among women both growing up in the Midwest and now in Los Angeles, it’s the kind that makes me frankly want to vomit. As a teen in St. Louis, I watched as all the popular girls iced me out (actually, they never welcomed me at all) because I was that academic kid with three learning disabilities who could carry on conversations with adults better than my own peers. And now, as a longtime editor at Glamour who covers Hollywood, I’ve seen my fair share of actresses, influencers, and producers who converse as if they’ve never had a real conversation in their lives. (Of course, I’ve also seen the opposite; those that truly understand what makes for a deep friendship, and what it actually means when women support each other, whether in the Midwest or the West Coast.)
But what Mike White so expertly does with this trio of women is showcase just how sad those superficial relationships are. Truth be told, I don’t even think Kate, Laurie and Jaclyn would consider their friendship ‘fake;’ they just don’t know how to be anything but.
“I’m very fascinated by female relationships,” Bibb says during our sit-down interview. “What resonated with me, because of the way I grew up, was the idea of being perfect and bright and shiny, and thinking that if I can control everything, I can make it fit into this and [be] the perfect this and the perfect wife. I had this idea that I could somehow ease any pain, which is a joke. You can’t do that in life.”
And yet, Laurie, Kate and Jaclyn think they can. When Laurie goes off to her room, Kate and Jaclyn use that time to gossip about her. “I think she’s kind of stalled out there [in New York],” Jaclyn says of Laurie. ”No wonder she looks defeated,” Kate replies.
Then, when Jaclyn returns to her room, Kate tells Laurie that Jaclyn “had the face everyone wanted,” when discussing their friend’s now sandblasted-like skin, before moving on to discussing Jaclyn’s love life with her new spouse. “And then the whole thing with the husband…there’s something weird there, right?”
There’s talking about friends to help them, and then there’s talking about friends just because it’s fun to gossip. It’s the latter in this case, and frustratingly, more common than any woman would want to admit.
“This storyline is going to spark a lot of conversation about female friendship and what it is to be a woman in the world,” Carrie Coon tells me. “It’s a [strange] way of connecting for these women. It’s like you throw the third one under the bus in order to forge a connection with the person who’s in front of you and connect under the auspices of, ‘I’m very concerned about our friend and I care about our friend.’ Both things can be true, but they’re also being really cruel and mean and judgmental. But ultimately, you wouldn’t have to have those conversations if everybody was showing up with everything they were holding.”
Take, for instance, Maddie (JoAnna Garcia Swisher), Dana Sue (Brooke Elliot) and Helen (Heather Headley) on Netflix’s Sweet Magnolias. Their friendship is so deep, so comforting, and so aspirational that I find myself thinking, ‘Is that even possible?’ ‘Does that exist?’ ‘Have I just not found my Magnolias yet?’ If that’s the trio of women that everyone wants to have, then what we see with Laurie, Kate and Jaclyn is sadly the one that we’re most exposed to. Or the one I sadly often see.
“We live in a world where women are publicly comparing themselves to each other,” Coon says. “I mean, that’s all social media is essentially…keeping up with everyone else. Mike uses the gossip between them to show how these women are weighing the cost of their own choices and their relative satisfaction. And then at the same time, Laurie is an alcoholic whose life is falling apart, and is not willing to be authentic with her friends about what’s actually happening in her life. And it’s so sad because if they had just walked into that villa and said, ‘Let me lay out everything that’s going on,’ they would’ve had a very different vacation. And that’s not the choice they made.”
But it still remains to be seen if once the realities of these women’s lives unravel—and you know they will—if they’re willing and able to properly confront it. Do they have the depth? Or is it a roadblock so massive that only years of therapy and life can undo?
“I love that Mike is asking the question of whether people are willing to let go of their [perfect] stories,” Coon says. “And if you let go of your stories, will the friendship evolve? Or survive? I’m eager for people to see how this resolves, because I think it’s going to say more to the viewer about their perspective on their friendships than it says about anything we’re doing.”
The storyline is not just a rallying call for women to take a deeper look at their own friendships, but also an opportunity that Coon and Bibb hope will result in more meaningful depictions of women on screen.
“We’re living in a time where I feel like storytelling about women is shifting. There’s a lot of stuff out there right now about frank sexuality in your 40s and 50s and post-divorce. It’s in this show,” Coon says. “We just get more interesting as we age. My 40s have been the most interesting and satisfying decade of my life so far. I find that we’re starting to see through the lies.”
More so, Coon says, women are also letting go of the notion that they can do it all on their own. “I have had incredible and supportive women throughout my career and have not felt undercut by women, generally. I am learning as I get older to ask for help and that it’s okay. And that those around me want to help. I just have to keep remembering that.”
The post How The White Lotus Nails the Ugly Truth About Female Friendship appeared first on Glamour.
