Reneé Rapp is the Lesbian Chaos Queen of Gen Z's Dreams
Deal with it!
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Reneé Rapp doesn’t give a damn. The Gen Z pop star has made a name for herself as a singer, actor, and a person with little regard for social norms of respectability. Rapp first gained prominence playing Regina George in the Broadway musical Mean Girls, going on to star in the Mindy Kaling-penned series The Secret Lives of College Girls. The 25-year-old released her second studio album, Bite Me, in August, featuring the single “Leave Me Alone.”
Over the last year or two, the narrative about Rapp has centered on her supposed lack of media training. During the press tour for the film adaptation of the Mean Girls musical, Rapp became notorious for her unfiltered, assertive comments during interviews. She publicly eviscerated a bus driver who was mean to her mom, told Andy Cohen she’s agiest and proud of it, argued that “gay people are just generally cooler and better,” and used the press tour to share how much she would like to date original Mean Girls star Rachel McAdams
During this time, a series of YouTube compilations of Rapp’s most unhinged interview moments cropped up, with titles like Reneé Rapp making her PR team question their life choices for 5 minutes straight and reneé rapp being a MENACE and making her pr team wanna quit for 6 (not so) straight minutes. This phenomenon even made it to an SNL skit, where she joked, “I’ve been going off in absolutely every interview lately, so now I have to do 40 hours of court-ordered media training.”
Most of the time, these jokes don’t function as criticisms, but rather gleeful celebrations of how much she’s been able to get away with. Her behavior in interviews has endeared her to fans even more. “Renee rapp your lack of media training is infectious , you just jumped up fifteen places on my stan list,” one X user wrote. Many media-savvy younger folks are well aware of the manufactured nature of press and celebrity content, and they’re tired of canned responses and PR-approved stories. They find Rapp’s candor delightful because she seems to be speaking from the heart, no matter the consequences.
Indeed, music fans these days often look for authenticity, and if not authenticity, then a cheeky awareness of their fabricated star persona and an ironic engagement with fame (take Sabrina Carpenter, for example). While Taylor Swift has strived for authenticity her entire career, even her most ardent fans are aware of the tightly-controlled public narratives she constructs, masterminded by her ever-powerful PR manager, Tree Paine. The fact that so many people know the name of Swift’s PR person indicates a heightened awareness of the manufactured nature of celebrity culture, even from so-called relatable stars. Rapp’s out-of-pocket behavior actually makes her appear more down-to-earth to many fans. As communications executive Bill McGowan told the New York Times, “In some ways unhinged has become the new authentic.”
Despite her larger-than-life personality, fans find Rapp relatable and see her as someone they might hang out with in real life. Rapp affirms this assumption through her interactions with fans online and in person, often treating them like peers. In many ways, they are, as both Rapp and a large portion of her fan base are internet-savvy, Gen Z queer folks. In Buzzfeed’s “Celebs Read Thirst Tweets” series, Rapp wasn’t shocked by any of the unhinged, horny messages sent her way, but rather relished the chaos and responded in kind. When someone came to her show holding a sign that said “hit me w/ your tour bus pls,” she put it on her Instagram page.
In many instances, opinions about Rapp fall along generational lines. While Gen Z and younger Millennials tend to appreciate her brash attitude and sense of humor, those with quite a few years on Rapp have a harder time relating to her. On the subreddit for Amy Poehler’s podcast, Good Hang, on which Rapp was a guest, several older users noted that they find her annoying, calling her “immature” and “self-absorbed.”
Rapp comes from a new generation of Gen Z queers – particularly white queers – who maintain an irreverence that queer folks just a decade older seem far less likely to possess. King Princess, a lesbian musician who’s a year older than Rapp, has a similarly crude and sarcastic sense of humor. (Though her attitude does sometimes rub people the wrong way, to be fair.) She recently made headlines by cheekily suggesting that she and the 73-year-old Christine Baranski were an item, and made a TikTok going off on Betty Who.
Rapp’s open attitude toward identity and queerness accounts for much of her appeal. While being a lesbian pop star is a central aspect of her “brand,” her celebrity doesn’t feel manufactured, but rather appears to stem from who she really is. For example, she recently appeared on Gabby Windey’s podcast, where she didn’t hold back one bit, diving deep into topics such as lesbian sex toys and how terrifying straight men are.
As an out lesbian, her frankness about attraction and sexuality feels novel. We’ve only recently entered an era of sexy sapphic singing, and Rapp goes one step further, publicly discussing her feelings for other women. When asked about Megan Thee Stallion in an interview, she responded, “Best ass I’ve ever seen in my life.” Her crush on Rachel McAdams became a prominent part of the Mean Girls press tour. “I’ve spent a lot of the last couple weeks publicly hitting on her,” she noted in one interview. Her unapologetic horniness represents a significant departure from public declarations of lesbianism in years past. She doesn’t appear to be afraid of coming off as creepy or predatory, a preconception that has loomed over the heads of lesbians for decades.
Moreover, Rapp found the courage to publicly discuss changes in her sexual identity. While she previously identified as bisexual, she came out as a lesbian in an SNL sketch when Bowen Yang called her “our little lesbian intern.” She told Poehler that it feels “euphoric” to finally be able to use that word to describe herself. Those who had negative things to say about her change in nomenclature? Rapp didn’t let that slide. In a video posted to her spam Instagram account, she railed against a detractor who told her it was unfair of her to identify as a lesbian when she used to identify as bisexual.
Rapp’s frank attitude about sexuality influences both her public persona and her perspective on acting. Though the new Mean Girls was nominally gayer than the original by portraying Janis Ian (Auli'i Cravalho) as a lesbian, Rapp queered the movie further through her presence in it. Though she’s not explicitly written as one, Rapp claimed in many interviews that she believes Regina George is a lesbian, and to those who disagree with her interpretation, she responded, “Alright, so maybe she isn’t to you, but for me, she is, so shut up. Be mad.” Rapp insists that she injects queerness into everything she does, and as she said of the film in an interview, “it inherently is because a gay person is doing it.” Not only does this perspective contradict the assumption that it’s bad for actors’ careers if everyone assumes all their roles should be gay after coming out, it also gives audiences permission to read Regina – and all other characters – as queer despite what everyone says.
Rapp is far from the first celebrity to gain a following due to her unfiltered demeanor. This supposedly outlandish behavior was in the purview of zany white women in the 2010s, most famously Jennifer Lawrence. Notably, Lawrence was at times seen as going “too far,” and her prolonged absence from the press seemed to be a reflection of how opinions on her had shifted. (This was also around the time everyone turned on Anne Hathaway for being too earnest during the press tour for Les Misérables.)
Some fans have worried that the general public will turn on Rapp in the same way. One X user claimed Rapp has already started getting the “jennifer lawrence treatment.” Still, things have shifted since Lawrence’s heyday, and Rapp’s candor directly feeds into her star persona and her music. Rapp’s lesbian identity is a foundational part of her public image, yet her brazen statements about sexuality appear off-the-cuff rather than calculated – a departure from how sexual orientation often functioned in Hollywood a decade ago. Even Kristen Stewart, who has always brought a down-to-earth sensibility to her public appearances and also “came out” on SNL, navigated a very different industry than Rapp.
While fairweather fans come and go, Rapp’s core fan base is devoted to their chaotic queen precisely because of her audacity. Though her divisiveness may appear to widen the cultural gap between generations, she seems to be just the kind of celebrity that young queer people have been waiting for.
Love this- I appreciate her care-free attitude. Signed, geriatric millennial.