This Time Around, Reneé Rapp Feels Right at Home
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What a difference a year makes. Last fall, when Reneé Rapp was preparing for the release of her new HBO Max series “The Sex Lives of College Girls,” she was praying both that people liked the show and that the exposure might help her with her one true passion: music.
“I think with season one there was so much fear around ‘Does anyone even want to watch this show?’ It was like, ‘Do people even give a simple f–k?’” Rapp says. “And I think this time around it’s like, ‘OK, cool. People are excited to come out.’ And this time around also it’s so amazing and exciting for me because I have all this music stuff going on, and so ‘College Girls’ just feels like a little perk. It just feels like a lot of really, really good things are happening and I’m very, very happy about it.”
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Rapp broke out as Leighton in the Mindy Kaling-created series, which quickly became a success last year and launched its second season in late November. The series follows four college freshmen and, as the title suggests, their various escapades throughout their first year. At the end of the first season Leighton came out to one of the other girls in a moment that was “cathartic” for Rapp.
“She has this experience of coming out that is so incredibly supported. It’s so nice. She comes out and everybody is down with it. I think that’s so cool to see, because a lot of the time that’s not the case,” Rapp says. “And of course, we’re making progress. Queerness has come so far in Hollywood, and don’t get me wrong, we have made f–king milestones. The people who have come before me have created spaces that myself and my friends are so incredibly lucky to be a part of. But I also think there is so much further to go, specifically with on and off of camera, behind the camera and in front of, and it’s really nice to see a character who is so accepted in her coming out, which is such a big deal.”
In the time between seasons, Rapp has made her music debut, getting a record deal with Interscope and releasing a new EP.
“It’s so cool because sometimes I genuinely forget that a lot of people know me as an actor. Because that doesn’t feel like me at all,” Rapp says. “I’ll get comments and it’s like, ‘Oh my God, wait, I had no idea she sang.’ And I’m like, ‘Wait. That’s so true. I had no idea that I acted.’”
Music has always been “the most important part of me” and in truth, she started acting as a way to do music.
“I basically got turned down by a bunch of labels when I was younger, and my parents really wanted me to go to college, and I really didn’t want to. So they were like, ‘All right, well, get a job.’ So I started acting and I started working in ‘Mean Girls’ on Broadway. Got a job, they let me move to New York, and I was determined to just command attention from labels.”
She describes the EP as “the rebirth of myself,” on which she writes about living for herself and not for outsiders.
“I started really putting myself first and that doesn’t mean that I was always making the correct decisions and do the right things but I have started being a little bit more selfish with my time and my emotions and understanding that if someone hurts me, that is not my problem,” Rapp says. “I don’t owe anyone anything.”
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