Reneé Rapp Pops Off

The white picket fence catches my attention. I’ve just pulled up to Reneé Rapp’s house in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains in Los Angeles. I’m parked in front of a dainty, terrifyingly 1950s white picket fence. It’s not hers, but nearby. The platinum blonde Southerner with perfect pitch and a filthy mouth has always been Americana-adjacent. It’s part of her star-making recipe: three parts talent, one part combustible candor. 

I walk past a burbling, meditative fountain and into her place. Scanning the lofty downstairs, I can see it’s the home of a 24-year-old pop star who’s had an EP and one album, who broke out on a racy HBO series, and played Regina George twice: on Broadway and in the Mean Girls musical movie. Which is to say, it’s swank, spare, and unabashedly a bit messy—“Sorry for all the shoes!” And, with an Erewhon bag here, foreign currency there, and various ticket stubs, lanyards, receipts, and sunglasses breadcrumbing to the pool, it has the feeling of, say, your friendly but slightly unknowable neighbor who’s always back from somewhere fabulous.

“Thank you so much for coming over, baby!” Rapp tells me, pulling me into a hug. “I am flying to London in a few hours to see my girlfriend.”

It's 90 degrees outside, but it’s, at most, 65 in here and Rapp throws an unyielding leather jacket on over a vintage Doors concert tee. She falls into a nubbly sectional sofa that looks like a Fair Isle sweater, pulls her knees into her chest, and tips over into the cushions. 

“Oh!” she says suddenly, sitting up and leaning toward me, her wide-set blue eyes popping open. “I should tell you: My house has Black Widows.”

Part One: "You're Going Back to My Roots, Bitch."

It’s been exactly five years since Rapp made her Broadway debut, as Regina George in the Mean Girls musical at the August Wilson Theatre. It was September 2019, just a year after high school and not long after she won what’s known as a Jimmy—at the National High School Musical Theatre Awards. The whole high school Tony Awards thing is an American Idol-meets-Glee live competition in New York City, throwing the best teenage jazzhanders from around the country into a proscenium-stage-steel-cage death match. That day she delivered a rousing performance of “All Falls Down” from Chaplin and breathlessly accepted the trophy for Best Performance by an Actress next to the winning male performer—as it turns out, the guy who would one day be in Tayla Parx Is Reimagining the Pop Star with Jennifer Lawrence. “I love Andrew Barth Feldman!” Rapp exclaims. “The Jimmys were insane that year.” 

What is remarkable about her Jimmys win—Google their performances; she’s right, cuckoo—is what she did not win leading up to that. 

“Fucking hell,” she says, remembering her adolescence in North Carolina, where she grew up on a lake. “I auditioned for all the reality singing shows, American Idol, all of them,” she says. “I was the little white girl with blonde hair from the South. I think I sang ‘Amazing Grace’ in a little peplum. I was on that vibe.” She dreamed of studying musical theater at University of Michigan, known to be the best musical theater school. “I didn't even pass the pre-screen part to even get an audition.” 

Her story from this point sounds apocryphal. She began auditioning in New York, made her way in front of Mean Girls creator and producers Tina Fey and Lorne Michaels. They offered her the role of Regina George in the touring company; she said no. They came back with an offer to take over the part on Broadway. She said yes…if they helped her with what she really wanted: pop stardom. 

Fey remembers the moment well. “She blew us all away. But then she turned it down!” Fey recalls Rapp saying “something about ‘pursuing her own music instead of Broadway.’” So Fey invited Rapp to meet with her and Michaels at his ldquo;I was like office. “It was an attempt on my part to impress her. I wanted to see if we could sway her.” What Fey remembers most is “thinking she was smart. Reneé understood that Lorne was giving her good advice. Better than the professional advice she was getting elsewhere. She took the job.” And, per their agreement, Fey and Michaels threw her a musical showcase where record labels came to hear her.

Says Rapp: “Tina and Lorne have been, genuinely, my two biggest cheerleaders.” And, she adds, “Tina is a woman who not once didn't like how ambitious I was. I've had that experience with a lot of older women that I've worked with and definitely a lot of fucking older men. Tina was never that, even when I was a kid and probably so fucking stupid and headstrong. She never wanted me to be smaller. Never.” 

This kind of talk has gotten Rapp “ageist” labeling. She laughs it off. Hard. “The ageist allegations are literally—literally!—maybe my favorite thing I've ever done in my career. But also, in a non-joking way, they are derived from people belittling me.” She’s deadly serious now, leaning in toward me. “Older people being like, ‘Well stay in your place.’ ‘Aren’t you cute!’ You don't get to disrespect me just because we are different in age.”

Rapp loved her time on Broadway, until the pandemic shut the show down in March 2020. But her second brush with fame (the first: a viral video covering Beyoncé’s “Halo” in high school) came with comments. 

“People are kind of fucking mean. But then I would read things that were super funny. Like, ‘She has no top lip.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, sir, that's honestly funny.’ Then everyone talking about my body, and my appearance, and whether I could sing or not. Um, which was interesting. And then it started to piss me off.”

She stops. Tucks her hair behind each ear. Wheels turn in her head. “Oh, I can feel, like, very dictated to, because I really care about people's opinions. Even if there are things that are, like, directly trying to hurt me, I still care. And it’s gonna fuck me up.” 

She’s not done with Broadway. She dreams of being in Cabaret. And she still goes. “I'm gonna take my girlfriend to see Wicked 'cause she's never seen it.” Towa Bird, her girlfriend , is a singer-songwriter. They are on the same label and Bird played guitar and was a co-writer on Rapp’s “Tummy Hurts.” 

Who asked who out, I want to know. “I mean she fucking definitely asked me out. She would deny up and down. She'd be like, ‘No. You were, like, obsessed with me.’ And I would be like, ‘Okay.’ We had a little serve off for a while. We are both Type A and stubborn. We were just mean to each other for a long time, which we didn't really understand. I get it now in hindsight, but at first we were just friends and super mean to each other.’” 

“She's the craziest thing to look at.” Rapp’s eyes close. “I fall in love with her all the time. She's insane to look at. I respect her more than anyone I've ever met. Like, she is fucking brilliant.” Rapp’s eyes open and she sighs. Bird is not into musicals. “But I'm like, ‘We're going to the theater. You’re going back to my roots, bitch.’”

Part Two: "Actors Are Batshit."

Reneé Rapp is one of about 70 million Gen Z Americans. She was seven years old when the iPhone came out. So, when I ask her what TV shows she watched growing up, she looks at me like I have two heads. “Uh, I was uploading videos of me singing.” She was never interested in acting. (The only TV show she will talk about? Olly Alexanders Journey to Polari: The Emotional Story Behind His 80s Dance-Pop Revival. “Viola Davis is a nut job on that show. Obsessed.”)

“I was like, Maybe I'll become, like, a pop star and then I'll be able to act in something. Kind of fame my way in the door.” 

When the pandemic hit, Rapp retreated back to the lake outside Charlotte with her parents and her younger brother, Charles. Along came an audition, via Zoom, for a new show called The Sex Lives of College Girls, co-created by Mindy Kaling. 

She got the part of Leighton, a wealthy and headband-ed NYC native and legacy student. She moved to Los Angeles in 2020 to start production on the single-camera comedy that chronicles, yes, the sex (and collegiate) lives of four suitemates at a fictional Vermont university. “I basically lived every day on set in fear that I was going to lose my job,” Rapp says, “because I just didn't think I was good.” She knows how she sounds. “Actors and musicians, we are so self-obsessed and addicted to hating ourselves. Actors are batshit.” 

Her character came out in the first season and Rapp quickly became a fan favorite. She did eventually watch some of her scenes. “And I was like, they helped her with what she really wanted: pop stardom. .” But rumors began to circulate about her fate on College Girls, and it was reported in July 2023 that she is leaving the show. Rapp confirms she will be back for a few episodes in season three to close out the character. 

As Rapp turned 24 in January, a lot dovetailed. She returned to Regina George, as the Mean Girls musical movie premiered. While reviews of the film were mixed, Rapp’s performance was squarely in the fresh category. (“Reneé’s Regina is for sure the most intimidating, and the sexiest,” Fey tells me.) Plus: Her song for the soundtrack with Megan Thee Stallion, “Not My Fault,” achieved RIAA gold certification. Oh, and I tell her, by my math she came out for the second time. (Bisexual, then gay. She jokingly came out a third time, as straight, during Pride this year.) She bursts into laughter. 

“I am on a lesbian pop culture viewing journey right now,” Rapp says. She’s watched essentials like But I’m a Cheerleader and Ammonite, with Kate Winslet. I suggest 1994’s Heavenly Creatures, starring Melanie Lynskey and, again, Winslet. “My lesbian queen!” she says of the latter, who is, to be clear, only gay in some films. “My other lesbian queen is Justin Bieber,” she says. “But it’s his style. I always tell my stylist: ‘Dress me like Justin.’”

Her personal aesthetic (oversized, slouchy, with footwear that veers cozy-cool) is Bieber-esque. And yet, Rapp says people often conflate her with her characters. “When I first started working [in Hollywood], I remember people being like, ‘Oh, she looks so different in real life.’ Or, ‘Wow, she dresses very different.’ I'd be like, ‘Yeah, I'm not a fucking c-nt.’ But I get why they think that, 'cause, like, damn, if you look at some pictures of me in things I've acted in, you would literally think my name is Jessica and I want blood every day.”

Megan Thee Stallion agrees. They met making the song for Mean Girls. "I said, ‘Reneé, you’re a stallion,'” she says genuinely. “She had these pants on, and I said, ‘You hiding all that body. Girl, show the people what you working with.’ I feel like the people needed to know Reneé got a wagon.” They became very good friends. “I don't know what I thought she was going to be like, because the TV show that I saw her on, that's definitely not how she acts in real life. I thought she was going to be so mean. I wasn't expecting her to be a sweet baby angel. If we both weren't who we are, if we both weren't famous, I think we would be friends in real life.”

“You look at these pop star girls and they're very cookie cutter,” Megan continues. “They're very, you know, 5, 6, 7, 8!  Following a plan. But my girl Reneé, she is doing her own thing. She's making up her own rules as she goes.”

Part Three: "I Just Want to Be a Pop Star."

Reneé Rapp’s songs are conceived in diabolical opposition. Merry-go-round trojan horses filled with knives. Her voice, high and clear, at times baby-whisper breathy; other times a tease, filled with so much swagger because we know she knows she’s holding back. There are plenty of sweet la-la-la-las and do-do-dos. She also sings a cool song about being waterboarded. Her lyrics can be dark, confessional. They deal with sexual assault, mental illness, love, anguish, self-sabotage, and liking someone so much you’re losing your shit. The most pop of them all, “Pretty Girls,” is an elevated, generational sequel to Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl.” (And, it bears noting, written and performed by someone who’s actually queer.) Rapp’s songs on her debut album are also, in part, another audition. For pop stardom. 

“I just want to be a pop star.” She’s told everyone, anyone, me, for as long as she remembers. In high school she performed at a mall fashion show. That part is not really important, other than to imagine Reneé Rapp performing at a mall fashion show, the kind of activity that young people do when they have dreams lit by klieg lights. To hear her tell it, it actually gets worse. There was a photographer there and he introduced her to a different guy and she ended up in a female singing group called… Daddy’s Little Girl.  

“It was a white Destiny’s Child,” Rapp says. “Two of the girls were Trump supporters. We were so young. I was like, You guys are really fucking weird.”

Rapp got a record deal with Interscope in June of 2022, with a debut single, “Tattoos,” which she parceled out on TikTok. Later that year came her EP, ldquo;I was like. Less than a year after that, her first album, Snow Angel (the most successful debut of any female pop artist in 2023). She had a writing credit on every song.

Now, the hard part. Her second album. She says it’s coming. She says everyone is ready for a single. She says she’ll release it when she wants. “Everyone thinks I’m gonna release a single this month,” she says, breaking into a huge smile, looking over to what I think is her Jimmy trophy. She says she’s cut back nearly everything else to work on her new music. She says she’s ready to reveal even more of herself. “This will be more like how I think, how I speak.” Her co-writer on much of the album, Ali Tamposi, wrote “Break My Heart” (Dua Lipa), “Wolves” (Selena Gomez), “Stronger” (Kelly Clarkson), and “Midnight Sky” (Miley Cyrus). In the canon, Tamposi says, Rapp stands out for her, well, lack of boundaries. “Her voice is unbelievable on the mic, she hits notes on the musical scale that you didn’t even know existed.” Even more so, it’s what she’s willing to put out there: “She’s beautifully unhinged.” 

Part 4: "Happy, Sad, Angry, Lonely, and Fucking Pissed All the Time."

I ask Rapp if she knows what seeing a Black Widow at home means. She doesn’t and I do not either. It’s the end of our two hours together and her management team will soon be putting her luggage by the front door.

She’s tired, she says. She’s been figuring out some health issues. Hormones, chronic strep. “I was really D.B. yesterday.” Down bad, she means. “It makes you incredibly exhausted and very depressed, because you’re just sick all the time but you don’t know why.”

“My biggest fear is being misunderstood,” she says quietly. “I'm a very passionate person. I'm very sensitive. I am protective. I think that sometimes people can construe that as me just being a bitch. I just have very big emotions and I feel very hard. It was really hard to live like that when I was a kid. It was very difficult. Living was exhausting.” 

Growing up queer in a small town, with big dreams and attenuated inner emotions, her head was a dangerous place. At times she felt like her skin was on inside out. Rapp has been open about her struggles with anxiety and disordered eating. “I felt so incredibly lonely. So fucking lonely and so happy and sad and angry and fucking pissed and brutal at all times. It was very, very, very, very hard to live in that body and that mind. It was literally too intense for me to live.” But she found refuge. There were artists whose music, she says, could take her into sort of a blackout.

Frank Ocean, Beyoncé, Kesha. She starts talking about their songwriting and her eyes close again. She says this like a prayer: “When I hear their music, I feel worthy. I only got into this industry for one reason: to feel worthy in myself. Music reminds me that there are moments that are actually chill. Leveled out.” Her eyes open. “It was the only relief.” 

As Rapp walks me to her front door, she talks about her future. The good days and the bad. She endures the bad more than ever, because she can then feel the good. “I've always been like this, since I was a kid. I have tried to shake it, I've tried to…whatever.” She says she’s turning off her phone more, posting less, writing music more. Leaving it all on the page is helping. 

“When I write a really good song, I'm like, Oh, wait, I do remember why I do like being alive.” She’ll always be an actor, but music is her focus now. She seems to need to get something off her chest. She takes a deep breath and makes one long rat-a-tat-tat declaration.

“I am just now really lucky that I'm able to pick where I'm going to be, because I'm gonna pick where I'm respected. I'm really grateful that I'm now afforded the opportunity to be like, ‘No, I'm not going to be here, actually. I'm not going to be somewhere if I'm not treated well.’ I don't really owe anyone anything, actually. I’m always grateful for opportunities, but, trust, I will find opportunities elsewhere. I'll create opportunities for my friends. I don't need one person to do that for me.” She smiles. 

I watch as her brain recalibrates. “Oh! I was watching a video with Chaka Khan during the new moon yesterday, and she said we need to manifest.” She lets a huge laugh rip, and I see the smile, the one from the podium at the Jimmys. One other part of Reneé Rapp. She’s a whole lot of fun. 

A few days later, I can’t stop thinking about the Black Widows in Rapp’s home. I ask some fairly woo-woo pals and am referred to Hitomi Matarese, a Nashville and New York-based psychic medium and energy healer who also deals in what’s known as “animal communication.” She interprets these kinds of, well, “repeated visits” by powerful creatures. 

“The Black Widow lives a life where they don't let anyone get in their way,” she says. “She doesn't deal with a partner. I've noticed that sometimes you'll see them when maybe you're opening your home to too many people, getting taken advantage of. Her purpose is so strong that [encountering one] can be a great reminder: ‘Hey, are you not setting boundaries with other people? How can you give your life precision in terms of what your purpose is?’ They have a really strong element of protection. And can be a brutal reminder. We let people get in our way. We let the past get in our way. We get in our own way.” 

Then I remember how Rapp dealt with the arachnids-cum-messengers. “They were very much murdered.”