Reneé Rapp ‘hated herself for months’ after being cast as gay character on The Sex Lives of College Girls

Actor and singer, who is bisexual, worried she wasn’t ‘gay enough’ to play fan-favourite character Leighton

Reneé Rapp has admitted to having conflicting feelings about taking a role of a gay character in The Sex Lives of College Girls.

The actor and singer has starred in both seasons of the Max comedy-drama series, which tracks the escapades, heartbreaks and other dramas of a group of friends at a fictional top university.

Rapp, 23, plays Leighton, a wealthy lesbian student who is immensely popular with fans of the show.

In a new interview with The Cut, the former Mean Girls Broadway star spoke out about when she was cast in the show in 2020. Rapp identifies as bisexual, but admitted she felt some caution about portraying a gay character.

“I literally hated myself for months because I’m bisexual,” she told the publication. “I had a boyfriend at the time, and I was being very homophobic to myself. I was like, I don’t deserve to be doing this; I’m not gay enough.”

Rapp said that for a long time, her “whole goal in life” had been to impress gay women, before adding a more complicated explanation of her desire,

“I have two sides of it,” she noted. “One is, like, I need straight men to just fall in love with me. And the other side of me is I need gay women to be obsessed and give me a thumbs-up.”

Renee Rapp (Getty Images)

Elsewhere in the article, published on Tuesday (1 August), Rapp said that a line in the show about not wanting to be “the gay Kappa girl or the lesbian cousin” stemmed from her own memories of how a relative was treated by her extended family.

“They said, ‘Don’t go around her because you will become gay,’” she explained.

Last month, it was announced that Rapp would be taking on a smaller role in the third season of The Sex Lives of College Girls before leaving completely, in order to focus more on releasing music.

Shortly after the news broke, Rapp posted a note on her Instagram Story sharing her appreciation for how the programme had impacted her career.

Thanking series creators Mindy Kaling and Justin Noble for believing in her, Rapp wrote: “A lot of queer work gets belittled – but playing Leighton has changed my life. I love who I am 10x more than I did before knowing her. I hope she gave y’all a little bit of that too.

“She’s such a tiny part of representation but even the tiny parts count. I wouldn’t be half the person I am without her and y’all. I love that b**** more than you know. I’m so excited for this season and I can’t wait for you to see what we have coming for her and the girls.”

The other lead actors, Pauline Chalamet (Kimberly), Amrit Kaur (Bela), and Alyah Chanelle Scott (Whitney) expected to reprise their roles.

The Sex Lives of College Girls is available to stream on Max in the US and ITV Hub in the UK.