Reneé Rapp Says Coming Out on ‘The Sex Lives of College Girls’ Helped Her Come Out in Real Life

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | March 4, 2024 |

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | March 4, 2024 |

In her recent cover story interview for The Hollywood Reporter, actress and singer Reneé Rapp was quintessentially honest and vulnerable about her life, her art, and her recent rapid success, including how she came out as bisexual.

For those of us who don’t closely follow the happenings of Broadway, Rapp’s big break was Mindy Kaling’s MAX series The Sex Lives of College Girls. Rapp played Leighton Murray, a wealthy legacy student and hopeful sorority sister who discovers her sexuality at Essex College. She comes out as bisexual to her roommate, played by Pauline Chalamet, in an emotional scene that Rapp says very closely mirrored her own life, and she thinks it helped her loved ones accept her sexuality.

“Look, this is good and bad. Being celebrated for being out because of a TV show or celebrity or success or something was really interesting because I think it forced a lot of people in my life and my family to have to accept me in a weird way, and in some ways that are twisted, like, ‘Damn, we could have done that a long time ago without her being on a TV show,” she said.

While she wishes she didn’t have to act out a fictional version of herself for the people in her life to accept her, she says she’s still grateful for the experience.

“I think it made it a lot easier in ways that pissed me off, but I’m also really grateful for,” she explained. “That [show] was the most parallel experience in my life, and I remember doing that specific coming out scene and not acting at all—at all. I was just sobbing. I see that and I don’t see a character. I’m like, ‘That’s me.’”

In 2023 Rapp announced she was leaving the series after two seasons, but she credits the show for helping her feel more confident in her career.

“The people in my life that I work with now care about me as a person,” she told Vanity Fair. “And I think that is a difference from things I’ve experienced in the past.”