Photography: Jonny Marlow | Styling: Jared Ellner @ The Only Agency | Hair: Marty Harper @ The Wall Group | Makeup: Dana Delaney @ The Wall Group
Reneé Rapp—the 21-year-old breakout star of HBO Max’s The Sex Lives of College Girls—is bringing a new type of mean girl to our TV screens.
The North Carolina-born actress, who previously starred as Regina George in the Broadway adaption of Mean Girls, plays Leighton Murray, a New York City–bred, prep school-educated popular girl who’s firmly out of her element at the quaint Essex College. Her character’s dry (and oftentimes, purposely problematic) sense of humor is quickly revealed to be a coping mechanism for masking insecurities around losing her friends, feeling out of place, and coming to terms with being queer.
Though the role is Rapp’s first foray into television, you wouldn’t know it by watching; she’s a natural onscreen. And even though the actress didn’t have a traditional college experience of her own to reference while filming, she found inspiration by looking to other parts of herself to shape the character of Leighton.
“She really tries to act like she has it all together, but frankly, I like to see her—and I don’t know what this says about me—crack and crumble a little bit,” Rapp tells BAZAAR.com. “Then you get to see more of her humanity and her internal struggles. It’s nice to see that sort of facade she’s putting on.”
Below, we speak with Rapp about filming her television debut, imposter syndrome, and why now is the perfect time for a show like The Sex Lives of College Girls to exist.
What attracted you to the role of Leighton and really to the project as a whole?
Leighton’s identity is very parallel to mine in terms of her sexuality. I loved that [the character] was exploring queerness in a comedic way, because I cope with everything in a comedic way. Also, obviously, I love Mindy [Kaling’s] work. The comedy is so strong on paper. When I read the pilot for the first time, I remember thinking this was definitely something that I wanted to do—or at least try to do at the time—but I truly thought it was so unattainable.
Mindy Kaling is obviously a comedy icon. How closely did you get to work with her?
Mindy was pretty much there for every day of the pilot, and then throughout the whole season was editing and in the comp room. She was super involved. I would go through half the day and then get an email from Mindy sending a very helpful note on something. It really helped me a lot, because I’m obviously very new and green to all of this. A lot of comedic things are a real science—comedy has so many layers that I, at least, didn’t see before working inside of it. And Mindy obviously is, like, the smartest person in the world. So [her advice was always] super helpful.
How do you think viewers are going to resonate with Leighton?
I think people are going to love or hate her, and rightfully so. If you agree with a lot of the things that she says and does, then we need to have a deeper conversation on a different kind of platform on a different day. She walks around thinking that she is the main character, but she also has a certain layer of honesty and consistency that’s kind of endearing.
What are some of the big lessons you learned from your first experience filming for television?
Oh, Jesus. I mean, everything. I really, truly went in knowing nothing and was really afraid from the jump. But now, I definitely feel like I’ve learned to just not take everything so seriously. I have a lot of anxiety and mental health struggles and things, as we all do. Sometimes, I would be so anxious and so hyper-aware, I would just create these scenarios in my head that were not actually happening, or I would read way too freaking deeply into things. Like, everyone is in the other room—we call it a video village—where all the writers and producers and people are outside of the set, and everyone is in there talking in between takes about what to do and how to set up the next shot. They’re not necessarily talking about how to fire me.
There were also the three other girls, and I think we all had to cope with the feeling of being super new and super green. I would literally leave work and check my phone and I would have a voice message from Alyah [Chanelle Scott, who plays Whitney Chase] that was, like, her in the car, driving home, opening up about how we felt that day. And nothing would be wrong! We would just be so freaking nervous ’cause we were so new. But it was at least helpful that I wasn’t panicking on my own—I had a partner in panicking.
Would you say you guys all bonded over that shared sense of “newness” on set?
Absolutely. Also, with filming in the middle of COVID, the first time we all tried to hang out and see each other, we weren’t even allowed to get together. We had all just gotten off planes coming from Canada, Paris, Texas, and New York. It could have been a superspreader! So we didn’t really get to spend that much time together outside of set, which actually in hindsight was beneficial for the story. As we were meeting in real life, you also see us meeting and getting more comfortable with one another onscreen.
Looking at the cultural climate we’re in right now, why is now a good time for a show like this?
What drew me in was, yes, it’s all about sex as a college girl. But sex is not centered in the story in the way that I think historically it would have been. This isn’t a come-out-of-the-gate-swinging, like, boobs-bouncing-on-a-beach scenario—and nothing is wrong with that. I personally subscribe to that, and I love it, but this is not that. This is about college girls and people who are not cis-identifying and how we are pushed into a box of what our sex lives are supposed to look like. There needs to be wiggle room to just be a human being who also has sex.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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Reneé Rapp Is Figuring It All Out
Source: Filipino Journal Articles
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