Rapp is as down to make fun of herself as the next Internet-raised 24 year old, but she’s not going to be the butt of your joke or apologize for her presence in every room she enters. She’s always been this way, more or less. (At the 2018 Jimmy Awards in New York, actress Laura Benanti said of Rapp onstage, “I will never be as confident as that 18-year-old.”) And her preternatural poise was a big part of what endeared her to Tina Fey when she was first casting the Mean Girls stage musical and ensuing film. “When Lorne [Michaels] and I had our first meeting with Renee about joining the Broadway cast, I felt like she was the smartest person on her team, even though she was only 19,” Fey says. “Renee’s Regina terrifies you, but also you want her to like you.”
A capital-P Popular girl might primarily be concerned with getting people to like her, but that preoccupation is one that Rapp is committed to leaving behind in 2024. She sees the expectations of perfection that are so routinely placed on women in the public eye, but she doesn’t consider it her job to bend to them. “Personally, I’m trying to care less. This is just my nature; I’m quite harsh, but also quite sweet at times,” she says. Recently, she tells me, a strange man had told her to smile; “It’s like, why are you demanding literally anything from me?”
Sometimes the demands placed on Rapp are closer to home. When we talk about the pressure placed on LGBTQ+ celebrities to perfectly represent their respective identities, Rapp says she’s grateful for her fans’ attention, which often manifests itself in flurries of social-media odes to her lack of media training (one might call this just a willingness to say almost anything on camera). “The only times I don’t appreciate it are when I feel like people need something from me, specifically, in my personal life,” Rapp says. “I do get how exciting it is to have someone you like—or hate, or feel any type of way about—be queer in the public eye, but I’ve had people say some crazy shit. I’ve had comments saying, like, ‘Oh my God, you’re never going to stop coming out already,’ and in a way, I did sign up for this, but I also think I’m entitled to a little bit of anonymity.”