Reneé Mary Jane Rapp is a name widely known by a variety of individuals: theater kids, original Mean Girls fans, pop/rock enthusiasts, or people with the simple yet chronic condition of addiction to Tik Tok. She rose to popularity with her role of Regina George on the broadway adaptation of early 2000s chick flick Mean Girls, playing the part from June of 2019 to March of 2020, when production shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Rapp furthered her acting career by securing the role of Leighton Murray on a teen comedy series titled The Sex Lives of College Girls, and her singing one by visiting Los Angeles, Manhattan, Boston, and Atlanta on her first tour “Everything to Everyone: The First Shows and releasing her debut album, Snow Angel, in August of 2023. What many recognize her from is her most recent project, a Mean Girls reprise, which came out in theaters just a couple months ago, in January of 2024. Although it received mixed reviews, it is indisputable that the movie painted Rapp in a positive light for the general public.
However, while most could list these facts about the actress/singer when prompted, many could not speak on her background. She did not simply emerge from a void of nepotism, she worked from the bottom up, making an honest living before stepping into the view of Hollywood’s eyes. Unlike most celebrities, who are derived from the glitz and glam of New York City or Southern California, Rapp comes from a region familiar to the majority of Hoofprint Readers: Huntersville, North Carolina, a well known suburb of Charlotte. Rapp attended North West School of The Arts, an arts school in the heart of Charlotte.
Rapp was born on January 10, 2000, approximately forty minutes away from Myers Park High School. She attended Hopewell High School for a couple years, before transferring to Northwest School of the Arts, abandoning her role of the varsity women’s golf team to fully pursue her passion for theater. Her theater teacher during her time at the school, Corey Mitchell, explained that Rapp “has a special distinction…There is a difference when that vocal ability is coupled with sincere emotions that can move an audience and that literally can excite an audience.” During her senior year of high school, she notably won Best Actress at Charlotte’s Blumey Awards for her performance as Sandra in the Northwest production of Big Fish. This win led her to receiving the nomination for Best Performance by an Actress at the Jimmy Awards In New York City, which she ultimately won as well. She stayed in Charlotte for a period of time after graduating, acting as Wendla in Theater Charlotte’s production of Spring Awakening. She was nominated for Best Actress in a Musical (local) at the 2018 BroadwayWorld Charlotte Awards as a result of this role.
Denise and Charlies, Rapp’s parents, still reside in Huntersville, having moved to the town back in 1995 due to a job opportunity for Denise, who is a certified public accountant. That’s to say, although Rapp has moved on to bigger and better pursuits that Charlotte could not fully fulfill, she still has a connection to the Queen City. Rapp has only been in the spotlight for a couple of years, and still has ample time to establish herself as “one of the greats.” It can only be hoped that her fame won’t blind her too much, so that she will seldom forget about her roots, at Northwest and in Charlotte as a whole. It would be a shame to forget the beauty this city has to offer, even if such isn’t always obvious or acknowledged. Nevertheless, it will be exciting to see where her career takes her next.