Diksha Sundriyal
In the third season of HBO’s ‘The White Lotus,’ the eponymous resort in Thailand becomes the center of a chaotic week. An array of guests arrive in the White Lotus with the intention of relaxing and finding some sense of calm and quiet. However, by the end of the week, things have changed radically for each of them. One of the guests is a woman named Jaclyn Lemon, who comes to the resort with her childhood friends Kate and Laurie. The complicated dynamic between the three of them gets worse with each day they spend with one another. Like every other character created by Mike White, there is an eerie sense of realism to the trio, specifically Jaclyn, which is one of the reasons why they are so compelling.
The Fictional Jaclyn Lemon Adds a Whole New Layer of Toxicity to Season 3
Created by Mike White, ‘The White Lotus’ features a cast of completely fictional characters who are meant to represent one or the other folly of the humans, especially the ones who are part of the 1%. In the case of Jaclyn, those flaws happen to be vanity, superficiality, and talking behind her friends’ backs, among other things. When actress Michelle Monaghan got the role, she found it to be a little on the nose playing a Hollywood actress. She found it a “little bit awkward and confronting” and “a little close to home.” However, once she read the script and got a sense of Jaclyn’s arc, she found the character to be “her own unique person,” which came as a sense of comfort for her.
Most of what we see with Jaclyn has to do with her friendship with Laurie and Kate, both of whom are riddled with their own flaws. For Mike White, the three characters came to him together. He imagined them as a “big, blonde blob.” According to Monaghan, she received the dialogues of all three characters during her audition, which gave her a sense that despite their differing personal and professional circumstances, the women were kind of interchangeable in the way they treated each other. She also revealed that White got the idea for the characters by witnessing the complex dynamics of friendships, especially female friendships, around him.
Because he wanted to portray a toxic trio, he leaned into the side of friendships where people in close circles are prone to compare themselves to each other. For women, particularly, these comparisons can often be a result of their own insecurities or their desire to feel better about themselves through comparison. Monaghan concurred that women can often be hard on themselves, and the competition and comparisons can take their toll on their psyche. We see the same happen with Jaclyn and her friends, as they bring out the worst in each other by repeatedly pointing out each other’s flaws and insecurities. And the reason it makes them so interesting is because they feel so close to reality.
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