The Shady Side Of Renée Rapp

On TikTok, a Renée Rapp fan warns that cancellation is coming for the star of the "Mean Girls" movie musical. The fan fears that Rapp's rapid rise has put a target on her back — but others think the remarks Rapp makes to the media might turn the tide against her. In response to Rapp's interview with The Cut, one member of the Fauxmoi subreddit wrote, "She's going to crash and burn with this kind of attitude."

During said interview, Rapp mused that the place her "white woman shines" is at an upscale Los Angeles grocery chain. "I work solely so I can go to Erewhon," she said. Her work includes many artistic pursuits: performing on the Broadway stage, recording music, and bringing Regina George back to the big screen. Speaking of which, some Rapp critics might view her as being "cocky" kindred spirits with the leader of The Plastics — if Regina were a theater kid with pop star aspirations. It did seem like Rapp possibly relates to her "Mean Girls" character a bit too much when she said, "Somebody who's mean and likable is crack to me." But feelings about a celeb's behavior are subjective; one person's confident and refreshingly unapologetic might be another's obnoxious and off-puttingly egotistical.

While discussing Rapp, the man who once media-trained the Kardashians, Bill McGowan, told The New York Times, "Unhinged has become the new authentic." In other words, the examples of Rapp's shady behavior below could actually end up benefitting her.

Ahead of the third season of "The Sex Lives of College Girls," Renée Rapp announced that she was leaving the Max series, which is produced by Mindy Kaling. A July 2023 Page Six report claimed that Rapp had employed an attorney to help her get out of her contract. "Both sides have been working to resolve things. There are a lot of egos at play," a source said. At the time, Rapp was preparing to release her album "Snow Angel," and she reportedly did not consult with her "SLOCG" bosses before announcing that she would be going on tour. According to another insider, however, there was no bad blood between Rapp and Kaling over the sudden career move. It was later reported that Rapp would appear in some Season 3 episodes before her permanent departure.

In many interviews, Rapp has made it abundantly clear that she always considered her acting career nothing more than a stepping stone to her ultimate goal: recording music. "I always knew this is what I was going to do by any means necessary. So, like, f**k everything else," she told The Cut of her pursuit of pop stardom. And now that she has it, anyone who hangs out with her best watch out. "I write about everybody," she told The Line of Best Fit. "If you don't want to be a part of my music career, just don't be a part of my life."

Before Renée Rapp joined the cast of Broadway's "Mean Girls" production, Lorne Michaels and Tina Fey offered her the role of Regina George in the musical's national tour. The offer would have been a dream come true for so many other 19-year-old stage actors, but Rapp turned it down to continue her pursuit of a pop music career in New York. Then came the offer to stay put in NYC and star on Broadway instead. Of how she responded to Fey and Michaels presenting her with another life-changing opportunity on a silver platter, Rapp recalled to The Cut, "I was like, I know you motherf**kers do 'SNL.' So I will do it if you agree to help my music career for the rest of my life." We're going to go out a limb and guess that this is not what she said to them verbatim.

Initially, Fey and Michaels helped Rapp scratch her pop itch by inviting her to perform at an NYC club. Then, in 2024, Michaels awarded her an even sweeter gig: being the musical guest on "Saturday Night Live." By then, she'd also reprised her "Mean Girls" role in the movie musical, which afforded her the opportunity to record a song with Megan Thee Stallion. "It was just always as a means to make this happen," Rapp told The Cut of how she masterfully orchestrated her totally fetch music career.

To promote her debut album, Renée Rapp purchased billboard space in the North End neighborhood of Boston and had the title of one of her songs splashed across it. The name of that song? "I Hate Boston." Unsurprisingly, this move angered some Bostonians, whom Rapp dismissed as "decrepit old white men" on "Late Night with Seth Meyers." In a tongue-in-cheek letter apologizing to Boston that she read to CBS News, she also spouted off some stereotypes about the city's residents. "Why are all of you Irish and angry? Perhaps it's the diet of Dunkin and Wahlburgers that incites so much passion," she said. 

"I Hate Boston" is a breakup song about a male ex-lover who resides there, hence the hate. However, Rapp admitted that it was inspired by a guy who isn't actually from Beantown — Boston's name simply sounded better in the song than his actual hometown.

Of how she felt about the reaction to the song, Rapp told Seth Meyers, "A lot of people were upset, and I enjoyed it." Rapp told Etalk something similar about how she's changed since doing "Mean Girls" on Broadway and filming the movie based on the musical based on a movie. She revealed that she secretly worried about how others perceived her during her stage performance period but experienced some growth that brought her to a different place. "I would actually like to piss people off more than please them," she confessed.

When Renée Rapp and her "The Sex Lives of College Girls" co-star Alyah Chanelle Scott appeared together on the "Las Culturistas" podcast in 2023, they shared an anecdote about an experience at a Hertz car rental lot in Miami. Scott recounted that the two of them were trying to leave the lot in a car when an employee named Nicki told them they couldn't take that particular vehicle. When they asked why, Nicki was unable to give them a reason and got on the phone with her supervisor. "Renée in the backseat goes, 'Just let me know when y'all want me to go, and I'll go,'" Scott recalled.

Scott gave Rapp permission to confront Nicki, so Rapp pulled her hood up and exited the car. "Within three seconds, all I remember is Nicki saying, 'Whoa, why you pulling up on me?'" Scott recalled. "And Renée said, 'I'm not pulling up on you, b***h.'" Rapp was apparently so terrifying that Nicki reacted by hiding in her office. Rapp and Scott seemed to have no regrets about frightening the employee and were sharing the story as if they found it amusing. Rapp did, however, cop to the possibility that Nicki wasn't entirely at fault for the altercation. "I was likely projecting something," she stated. She also admitted that she has a habit of losing her temper, saying, "I go from zero to 10 so quickly."

Renée Rapp risked angering some of fans of the original "Mean Girls" movie when she admitted that there's a certain group of people she can't stand. There are no changes they can make that would make them more acceptable to her, either — it's not their political views or other malleable ideologies that she has an issue with. She and "Watch What Happens Live" host Andy Cohen were chatting about which "Real Housewives of Potomac" cast member she could see herself being friends with when she confessed, "I'm very ageist."

Rapp assured a stunned Cohen that she wasn't ageist toward him, revealing that the older people who usually get under her skin are female. "Millennial women were always coming for me, and I was like, 'Shut up,'" she said. Cohen's other guest at the time, quinquagenarian "RHOP" star Gizelle Bryant, pointed out that getting older isn't something Rapp herself can avoid, and Rapp admitted that this is something she's afraid of. On X, formerly known as Twitter, some people suggested that Rapp was joking. However, she doubled down on "Las Culturistas," saying, "I'm very publicly ageist. I don't f**k with the whole, 'Respect your elders.'" But for the record, she has also admitted that her fellow Gen Zers are far from perfect. "This generation is still super mean to each other," she told The Guardian. "But we are more outspoken — and give less of a f**k."

If Reneé Rapp had her way, there's a color she'd never wear on Wednesday again. And speaking of that day of the week, it sounds like she'd be more amenable to appearing in the Netflix series "Wednesday" than starring in a potential "Barbie" movie sequel. "I'm tired of wearing pink. I've had it, I'm good on it. I don't want to do it anymore," she told Extra. Maybe she isn't so much like Regina George after all.

Complaining about the wardrobe of the movie you're promoting might not be the best way to convince other producers that you're primo leading lady material. It's probably also a bad idea to give quotes to outlets like this one that The Cut published: "I don't even give a f**k how I acted in that f**king episode of that show or that movie or whatever."

Rapp laughed off the backlash to her lack of a filter in a "Saturday Night Live" sketch, saying, "I've been going absolutely off in every single interview lately, so now I have to do 40 hours of court-ordered media training." If she really were undergoing such training, someone might want to advise her to quit saying that she wants to soley focus on making music; she told Broadway World that she'd like to win an EGOT, and acting could help her earn the E, O, and T. A Redditor also shared this advice: "She should work on her EGO first."