The world has been waiting for a Carrie Coon monologue, and in the season three finale of The White Lotus she delivered.
The veteran actor is known for her dramatic chops and quiet yet powerful emotional resonance, and her character on the hit HBO series, Laurie, has been no exception. One of three childhood friends reunited for an extravagant girl’s weekend, Laurie has contained a simmering sadness and rage since the first episode, when seeing her besties, Jaclyn and Kate, chatting and laughing sent her into a wail of despair. It’s our first glimpse into her inner turmoil—that despite how much she loves her friends, she is filled with grief when she compares their lives to her own.
For the audience, Laurie’s feelings were achingly real—and disquietingly uncomfortable. All three women entered into their adult lives on relatively the same level. They graduated from their Midwest high school (a detail Michelle Monaghan, who plays Jaclyn, revealed when Glamour spoke with her earlier in the season) and headed on three separate life paths.
But since then, their fortunes have diverged. So it’s not entirely surprising that while Kate and Jaclyn discuss how amazing the week in Thailand has been, Laurie finally admits that she hasn’t felt the same way. She has felt “sad all week,” she tells them, and it’s mostly because of her own internal pain.
“I just feel like my expectations were too high or I just feel like as you get older, you have to justify your life and your choices,” she starts. “And when I’m with you guys, it’s just so transparent what my choices were and my mistakes.”
She then continues: “I have no belief system. Well, I mean, I’ve had a lot of them. I mean, work was my religion for forever, but I definitely lost my belief there. And then I tried love and that was just a painful religion just made everything worse. And then even for me, just like being a mother, that didn’t save me either. But I had this epiphany today, I don’t need religion or God to give my life meaning, because time gives it meaning. We started this life together. I mean, we’re going through it apart, but we’re still together. And I look at you guys and it feels meaningful and I can’t explain it, but even when we’re just sitting around the pool talking about whatever and name shit, it still feels very fucking deep. I am glad you have a beautiful face and I’m glad that you have a beautiful life. I am just happy to be at the table.”
As we’ve learned throughout the season, the other two women seem to have ended up mostly fulfilled. Jaclyn’s a glamorous and gorgeous television actress, living in Los Angeles and married to a (presumably) hot younger guy. Kate (Leslie Bibb) is a wife to a (presumably) successful man and mother living in Austin, living her best life as a lady who lunches.
For Kate, it seems everything in her life has mostly ended up in a way that makes her happy. As she says during the group’s final dinner, she views her current circumstances as a fruitful result of every choice she has made thus far.
“Our pastor at our church talks about how there’s a time in life, after years of watering and weeding and nurturing your soil, and then one day you look around and your garden is in bloom,” she tells her friends. “And that’s how I feel right now. Everything is in bloom. All our flowers are in bloom.”
Jaclyn agrees but Laurie, quite obviously and painfully, doesn’t. Laurie has worked as an attorney and made her career a focal point of her life, but she isn’t in the place she wanted to be. She’s resentful of the fact that, despite working as hard as she can to climb the corporate ladder, it apparently hasn’t been enough.
Laurie’s personal life is similarly unfulfilling. After what seems to have been a contentious divorce, she is now struggling with raising her difficult teen as a single mother. And while Jaclyn views her single status in Thailand as a way for Laurie to get her groove back, her attempts only lead to further humiliation and self-loathing. She attempts to get with hunky hotel wellness expert Valentin, only to get passed over for Jaclyn. Then, she hooks up with his friend, Aleksei, only to have him beg her for money (and then have to jump out his window when his angry girlfriend shows up).
Laurie’s sentiments instantly heal the tension simmering between the friends all week, and they depart on solid ground. Because what the trip did for her was help her to realize that just because her life hasn’t ended up the way she thought it would, doesn’t mean it has no meaning. And her relationships are a part of that.
Carrie Coon’s monologue and the character’s arc overall is instantly relatable to many, even if it may be hard for us to admit. In an interview with the official White Lotus podcast about the finale, show creator and writer Mike White said he gleaned the monologue from his own feelings over the years with his long term friends.
“I like the idea of Carrie Coon’s final speech about time and how those relationships are, at least for me, where I find a deep meaning in my life,” he said. “…It’s like, they’re not always the deepest friendships, but there’s something deep about reconnecting with those people and how everybody has their own religion, but there’s something inarguable about how time creates meaning.”
He added: “It was really just more how we have these touchstones in our lives and how those people can create suffering for you just by existing, because they went a different way and you went one way and you always sort of feel like you’re defending your choices just by being in the presence of someone who you came up with.”
It’s so common to feel like a complete failure in one way or another when compared to someone they love, and then spiral into self-loathing over feeling more anger than happiness when they continue to succeed. It’s one of the deepest parts of friendship, feeling a range of emotions towards a person, but loving them anyway.
And for all the ink that’s been spilled over the friendship trio and their dysfunction, in the end, it’s the myriad of emotions they feel toward one another that made them the most realistic part of The White Lotus season three.
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