Reneé Rapp graduates from ‘Mean Girls’ to ‘College Girls’
When Broadway shut down during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, “Mean Girls” star, Reneé Rapp, figured she’d take the opportunity to return home in North Carolina and wait it out — thinking it would be only a few weeks. Weeks turned to months and when Broadway showed no sign of reopening soon, the now 21-year-old had to figure out what was next.
She recalls a conversation with her mom who said, ‘What are you going to do with your life?’ And I was like, ‘I’ll get on it, Denise. Thank you,’” said Rapp in a recent Zoom interview.
Rapp’s manager suggested she begin auditioning for film and TV. Prior to that, Rapp says she had only done a few selftape auditions and describes them as “not cute.” She read for the HBO Max series “The Sex Lives of College Girls,” created by Mindy Kaling and Justin Noble, and was shocked to even get a call back. It debuted on Thursday.
“I remember hearing they liked me and that I was ‘pinned.’ I had no idea what that meant. I thought it meant they had someone else and I was on the back burner.” (It means you’re liked by the casting director and production for a role, and they want you to hold filming dates on your schedule.)
Rapp got cast as one of the four leads in the series alongside Pauline Chalamet, Alyah Chanelle Scott and Amrit Kaur. They portray college freshmen at a fictional New England university who share a dorm suite. Rapp plays Leighton, a Manhattanite with family money, who is a legacy student. She presents herself as more worldly and sophisticated than her roommates, but she’s also carrying secrets about herself that she’s not ready to get out.
Getting the job meant Rapp had to officially leave her “Mean Girls” role of Regina George and ask producers including Tina Fey to let her out of her contract.
“I didn’t think it would hit me as hard as it did. Getting that out from Tina and the team, I cried. It had been my whole life for an entire year,” she said. (The show eventually decided not to reopen postpandemic).
Rapp quickly tears up at the thought of how two formidable female producers in Hollywood, Fey and Kaling, took a chance on her for Broadway and television.
“They’re both two of the coolest people I’ve ever met, two of the nicest people I’ve ever met, and two people who have truly taken such a huge swing at bat for me. I will never forget that.”