Showrunner Mike White spills about the White Lotus hook-up that never was
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The White Lotus Deleted a Pivotal Scene Where Piper Lost Her Virginity
Showrunner Mike White reveals the unexpected
White Lotus character she would have hooked up with
By
Chelsey SanchezPublished: Apr 08, 2025 12:22 PM EDT
By the end of
The White Lotus’s season three
finale, Piper Ratliff (Sarah Catherine Hook) has ditched her dreams of living in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand and embraced her destiny as a monied and privileged Southern belle. But, showrunner Mike White revealed that there was originally more to her story.
In a new episode of
The White Lotus Official Podcast, White opened up about a scene where Piper lost her virginity, which ultimately
ended up on the cutting room floor.
“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 [played by Nicholas Duvernay], which is Belinda’s son,” White said. The cut scene would have had Piper grappling with her reticent attitude towards her own sexuality, a trait that older brother Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) crudely pointed out in episode one. “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.’ After she leaves the monastery, she’s like, ‘I need to have sex.’ She’s scoping the restaurant.”
HBO
Ultimately, White scrapped the scene because it was too long and it felt out of place with the finale’s overall tone. “[The finale is] an hour and a half already and it would’ve added like 10 minutes to the thing,” he said. “And it had a little bit of a romantic rom-com vibe in the middle of like trying to kill the family with the pong-pong fruits. It just felt like i was trying to do too much narratively.”
Since the scene was cut, another scene between Saxon and Piper was also altered. “When she comes in, there’s a piece of that conversation that was cut because it doesn’t make sense anymore, and [Saxion is] like, ‘You look different,’ and she’s like, ‘What book are you reading?’” White explained. “At the end when they’re on their boat, she’s just thinking about how she got nicely fukked or whatever and he’s like reading his self-help book and there’s this kind of reversal.”
Stefano Delia/HBO
Earlier in the episode, White explained how Saxon and Piper were foils of each other.
“One kid is ... carnal ... not only just exist[ing] that way, but also has a philosophy around it. Like, you wanna get p*ssy. The pleasures of life are very basic. Life is about wanting things and getting them, and if you can get them, then you’re gonna be happy,” he said of Saxon. Meanwhile, Piper initially took a polar opposite approach to her own desires. “A lot of times, people who retreat from life are just afraid they’re not gonna be able to get the things they want or they say they don’t actually want the things they want. ... [Buddhism is about] renounc[ing] things because wanting things is suffering.”
He continued, “It’s just two different arguments. Somebody who is like, ‘I want to retreat to the monastery, not have any desires, and that’s gonna be the better way to live this life.’ And another one who is calling them on it and saying, ‘You’re just afraid to have sex, you’re afraid to do this. Don’t run away from life.’”