The Rapid Rise of Reneé Rapp

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | January 17, 2024 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | January 17, 2024 |

The elevation of Mean Girls to the status of true 21st-century pop culture phenomenon has seen it become a multi-media empire. This January welcomes the release of a new film, based on the Broadway musical adaptation of the movie, which Tina Fey adapted from a parents’ guide to raising teenage girls. Reviews have been mixed, with some loving this modern reinvention of a ‘classic’ (guys, it’s not even two decades old yet) and others wondering what the point of it all was beyond brand extension. Still, it opened at number one at the box office this past weekend, suggesting that it at least appealed to its key demographic (aside from those who apparently had no idea it was a musical? Somehow?) There’s one thing everyone has agreed upon, however, and that’s the scene-stealing performance of Reneé Rapp as the new queen bee, Regina George. Rapp, who got her start on The Sex Lives of College Girls, has become the first true breakout star of 2024 thanks to her star-making Mean Girls role as well as a growing music career.

Rapp, aged 24, is the undeniable face of the new Mean Girls. As Regina George, she is an assertive and classic b*tch who seems far smarter than the minions who surround her and cynics who view her as a vapid blonde. The industry loves to crown hot new starlets, endlessly bringing in the next big thing in the hopes of creating a bona fide movie star, something our generation is in short supply of. Rapp, however, is uninterested in following that route, which makes her journey that much more interesting.

Rapp first came to the attention of the theatre world when she won Best Actress at the Blumey Awards, the top musical theatre prize in Charlotte, North Carolina. She then won a Jimmy Award, which is the Tony of high school theatre, thanks to her work in a production of Big Fish. Laura Benanti, a major Broadway star and the former Melania Trump of Colbert’s The Late Show, heralded her talent and confidence. Her success led her to New York, where she took over the role of Regina in the Broadway production of Mean Girls. Her run was cut short because of COVID, but mere months later, she was cast on The Sex Lives of College Girls as Leighton, a newly out lesbian student trying to get out of her mother’s shadow. She downgraded her regular role to a guest star for the third season, announcing that she planned to focus more on music than acting.

Social media is on the hunt for a new pop girlie, the kind of high-octane performer of ceaseless bops that was more present in the cultural ecosystem of the ’90s. There are certainly a number of contenders in the current landscape, many of whom are clearly influenced by the likes of Britney and Christina. Consider Kim Petras’ dance-pop, which is at its best when it leans into the camp of double-entendre and proud fluff, or the ruthless efficiency of Ava Max, or the deliberate retro styling of Tate McRae. Then you have Victoria Monet and Tinashe, who are undeniable talents but lean more towards R&B than pop. Rapp is easily cut from the same cloth as her new contemporaries, with a focus on classic earworms and the kind of stuff that gets a roomful of people dancing and singing along. It’s personally not my thing, but I understand Rapp’s inspirations and whom she’s making music for. It helps that she has the pipes, which many of her competitors do not.

Unlike Britney or Christina, Rapp is delightfully casual with her media presence. Her fans have celebrated her lack of PR training and frequent bouts of verbal diarrhoea. She’ll swear, call people out, she’ll curse the guys who were rude to her mother. It’s pure Twitter catnip, that unconscious display of self that has no time for decorum or how women are “supposed” to react. In a conversation with Vogue, Rapp cited Jennifer Lawrence as someone who she thinks is succeeding at ‘the game’ of Hollywood. It’s easy to make comparisons between the two, thanks to their shared bluntness and genuine sense of fun amid the chaos of celebrity. Of course, that means we’re already bracing ourselves for the inevitable ‘backlash,’ as the same people who find such candour charming switch sides and declare it to be fake or annoying. For now, Rapp is in a solid place.

Renee rapp your lack of media training is infectious , you just jumped up fifteen places on my stan list pic.twitter.com/cv2ybHxLvr

— REESE HAVOC ✨ (@reesehavocnyc) January 12, 2024

Rapp may be getting headlines for her film work right now, but she’s unabashed about letting the world know that acting is and always has been a launchpad for her to get to her true passion of singing and songwriting. American and British pop culture are curiously limiting in what they allow celebrities to be. If you want to be a ‘serious actor,’ you can’t also make top 40 hits. Those who juggle a variety of professions are often seen as not committing to their true craft. Jennifer Lopez is a singer, actor (in film and television), presenter, dancer, and perfume queen, and yet that multi-hyphenate dominance was seen as a hindrance when she went on the awards campaign trail for her excellent performance in Hustlers. The snobby consensus was that she couldn’t do it all. This isn’t a problem in other countries. Tony Leung can be one of the world’s greatest actors and still release albums, while Charlotte Gainsbourg’s music has only gotten better as her acting career has evolved. For Rapp to assert her agenda so proudly and pull it off without much pushback might be a sign of progress. Why can’t she do it all, and why can’t acting provide a good springboard to the medium she prizes the most?

That’s not to say she didn’t face some cynicism when she left The Sex Lives of College Girls with the explicit intention to become a pop star. She certainly did receive a lot of flack for leaving a successful streaming series as a young woman barely in her 20s trying to carve out a path that the majority of actors either reject or have no interest in. Even while promoting Mean Girls, she has been honest in stating that she has no hunger to return to acting full-time because music is where her passion lies. Imagine if she’d done this two decades ago when the original film came out, and how quickly the likes of Perez Hilton and TMZ would have smeared her as an ungrateful brat.

To top it all off, Rapp is also proudly queer and centres her community in much of her conversations. When talking to Vogue, she shared her desire to open a queer bar in LA, and that her entire friends group was made up of queer and trans people. Rapp has talked about struggling with her sexuality and the skepticism she faced from colleagues on The Sex Lives of College Girls pertaining to her identity because, at the time of shooting, she was dating a man. Hoo boy, shout out to my fellow bisexuals who can painfully relate to that!

It’s 2024. It shouldn’t be outlandish for a singer to act and vice versa. Rapp is young, confident, talented, and grew up under the exhausting constraints of misogyny and queerphobia that limited the ways that female celebrities could create themselves. Pushing against that and having no qualms about rejecting an industry that seems primed to reduce her is exciting. It’s no wonder she has fans who want her to step on them.

Reneé Rapp when asked if she’d rather go to school now or in the 2000s:

“Well, I’m gay, so I’m gonna go with now.” pic.twitter.com/IfkAnE4DYB

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) January 16, 2024