Opening UpEverything Renee Rapp Has Said About Her Sexuality, Coming Out: Quotes

On Being Queer

The HBO Max actress spoke about how she likes to be identified in an interview with Vulture from November 2021.

“I usually just use the term queer. I’m 21, and there will be days that I go to my partner and be like, ‘We need to have a conversation because I think I’m this.’ And then I’ll come back and be like, ‘No, I’m this.'” she said. “It’s a queer, evolving story. What I think is beautiful about this younger generation is that we have more grace about finding your identity and how these things change and loving that part of yourself.”

A Lot of ‘Internalized Homophobia’

“I’m a white, bisexual woman, so there’s a sense in which my queerness is very palatable,” she explained in an interview with Vogue from November 2022. “Truly, though, so much of Leighton is me, and so much of Leighton has helped me understand myself. I don’t think that I had an amazing relationship to my queerness, but through playing Leighton, I feel like I’m being much more openly queer, because it is a public part of who I am, and I’m very proud of that.”

She went on to explain her mental battle with internalized homophobia.

“I have a lot of internalized homophobia. I was raised in the South, and I don’t want to use that as an excuse, but like queerness was not something that was celebrated, right? In high school, I had already sort of built up my own mental walls about what queerness was to me, so I was busy judging myself and probably other people in the process. Leighton has helped me a lot; don’t get me wrong, it’s also been a mind-fuck, because sometimes I’m like, ‘You know, I really do spend a lot of time talking about being gay,’ but you know what? I love it.”

How ‘College Girls’ Helped Her

Reneé told Buzzfeed that her Sex Lives of College Girls character Leighton has empowered her on her own queer journey.

“I don’t think I ever really dealt with those emotions as outwardly as Leighton did,” she said. “I kind of … just let s— go, in a bad way.”

‘Call Her Daddy’ Interview

On an episode of “Call Her Daddy” from March 2023, Renee shared that her experience with coming out was not taken seriously by the people around her. “I was just, like, laughed at every time I tried to come out. So then I never really talked about it. And I had always just said, ‘I just was one of those people who never felt like they really had to come out.'”

She even admitted that her genuine “coming out” to her family was by means of Sex Lives of College Girls.

“To be honest, I feel like my genuine coming out to my family — close and extended — has been doing College Girls,” she explained. “Because now that part of me is on display in a very palatable way.”

“I understand there’s an immense level of difference in people who are bisexual. I’m a cis, white woman,” she continued. “That’s loaded in and of itself. I understand that. It still really f–king pissed me off. It made me second-guess everything about myself.”

Referring to Herself As a Lesbian

“I’ve only recently started referring to myself as a lesbian, and I’ve only recently been in a relationship where I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m a lesbian for sure,'” she told the Hollywood Reporter in February 2024.

“I never consumed any piece of queer media up until maybe three months ago. I’m watching The L Word for the first time, and I just watched But I’m a Cheerleader, and I’m watching all these movies and parts of gay culture, specifically lesbian culture, and I’m like, ‘I love this.’ It’s also been the most rewarding, validating, scary and exciting experience ever. So to imagine that that could be like that for somebody else, that makes me love acting.”

Addressing Fans

She took to X on March 25, 2024, to clarify some things with fans.

“[I]f I say I’m a lesbian I am a lesbian and if someone says they’re bi they are bi,” she wrote. “I’ve had enough of you witches.”