The 'Mean Girls' star announced her departure from the Max comedy as a series regular for the upcoming season.
In July 2023, Reneé Rapp announced her unexpected departure from Max's The Sex Lives of College Girls in the forthcoming third season, and since then, the singer has taken over the music industry and will make her feature film debut in the new Mean Girls movie.
The actress and Broadway star plays wealthy university student Leighton on the Max series, and will leave as a series regular in the upcoming third season. Rapp will appear in "a handful of episodes" in a recurring capacity before exiting the series, a Max rep previously confirmed to ET.
Speaking about her exit from the Mindy Kaling and Justin Noble-created comedy series, Rapp tells Vanity Fair that she feels much better about the state of her career than before.
"The people in my life that I work with now care about me as a person," she tells the outlet. "And I think that is a difference from things I've experienced in the past."
The Snow Angel singer will reprise her role as Regina George, which she portrayed in the Mean Girls Broadway show, in the upcoming film iteration of the story made iconic in the beloved 2004 film and which draws inspiration from the successful Broadway musical that followed -- both of which were written and produced by Tina Fey.
The film also stars Angourie Rice as new student Cady Heron, Christopher Briney as Aaron Samuels, Bebe Wood as Gretchen Wieners, Avantika as Karen Shetty, Auli'i Cravalho as Janis 'Imi'ike and Jaquel Spivey as Damian Hubbard.
Rapp tells Vanity Fair that she learned she was playing Regina at a point where she felt "jaded and really angry and sad and bullied. I was like, I hate the industry." Fey offering her the role felt like "a new start."
The star has previously opened up about her time on the Max series, confessing that her season 1 experience was less than ideal during a March 2023 episode of the Spotify Original podcast Call Her Daddy.
Rapp explained that her tough time on set came as she was questioning her own sexuality while playing Leighton, who's a lesbian, on the series.
"The first year doing College Girls was terrible. It was terrible," she said. "It sucked so bad, because at the time, I was in a heteronormative relationship. I hated going to work, because I was like, 'I don't think I'm like good enough to be here. I don't think I can be here. I don't think I can be doing this.' I was like, 'Maybe I'm just trying too hard.' And then I would come home and I would psych myself out, literally."
"I will never forget [how] I sat on my front porch, called one of my friends, and I was like, 'I am straight... I think I'm just straight. I can't do this. I can't do this.' And they were like, 'What the f**k is going on with you?' And I was like, 'I don't know. I don't know, but I can't.'" Rapp, who is bisexual, recalled. "I was just in a panic constantly. And I wasn't [straight], but I was so freaked out by the idea of my sexuality, not being finite or people laughing at me or me laughing at myself that I hated first year of filming."
Her negative on-set experience was especially disappointing for Rapp, because she had been "so excited" about the opportunity when she auditioned for the role.
"I remember getting that audition breakdown and being so excited, because I'd never been submitted to audition for a queer character. It was so exciting, and then doing the job, [it] being such a mindf**k was so scary," she said. "Also, I'm on a show [where] there are a lot of men around... There are a lot of gay men around. There are a lot of straight men around. There are a lot of older men around me on set. So I'm going through set, doing these scenes, and I'm also having gay men come up to me and be like, 'So are you, like, really gay?' I was like, 'Ugh!'... It really f**king pissed me off and it made me second guess everything about myself."
As such, Rapp said she was "beating myself up so much" during the "crazy" experience. "I wanted so badly to do a good job," she said. "... I wanted to play the role in the way that if I saw it as a kid it would feel good to me. I also wanted to do a good job so bad that I was so nervous all the time. It was so much the first season."
Even though things improved on set, Rapp admitted that she's "always scared" people will compare her to her conservative-dressing Sex Lives character, sharing that she thinks about the prospect "constantly." She combats that by releasing her own music, seeing a person that makes her feel "really happy" and "very appreciated," and leaning on those close to her.
During an interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music 1 in July 2023, Rapp admitted she feels more fulfilled when she's making music compared to when she's acting onscreen.
"I love it so much. It's like, I don't even care. And I don't know if that's because I've had different experiences on the other side because I've also had amazing experiences on the other side, but it just doesn't f**king matter to me in music," she explained. "Everybody's like, 'Music is so psychotic. This business is crazy. Don't you wish you could just go back to not having that?' And I'm like, 'No. No. I am so much happier when I'm doing this.'"
"It's the most emotionally intense ups and downs that I have because then it also makes the other things really hard," Rapp continued. "I care so much about my music and I care so much that when there are those down moments, they're so f**king down. Because I feel like a lot of times people are like, 'Yeah, I don't really care. It's cool. It slides off my back.' I'm so envious of those people. I think that's amazing. And I would love to develop that trait."
Despite this, Rapp has been open about her excitement in reprising the role of Regina George.
"I try not to think too much into something. I try to just do it and do it how I feel like I'm gonna stay in that moment. The second I start to overthink, then I start to kind of be something that I'm authentically not," she previously told ET about taking on the role. "That's not what I wanted for this. That's also not where I'm at in my life at the moment."
"It's very different 'cause when I was doing it on Broadway, I was 18, 19, and now I'm 23, 24, so I'm a different person," Rapp added. "... I also think like cinematic medium is more catered to the acting that I like to do. I like the intimacy and I like the nuance that you don't necessarily get on stage."
Mean Girls will hit theaters Jan. 12.