How Reneé Rapp Graduated From The Sex Lives of College Girls

School is no longer in session for Reneé Rapp—at least, not at Essex College. The second episode of The Sex Lives of College Girls season three bids farewell to Rapp’s ambitious Leighton Murray, who transfers to a college that can offer her more advanced math courses. Do better, fictional Essex curriculum!

Last July, Rapp joined the likes of Olivia Rodrigo, Regé-Jean Page, and Kevin Costner by announcing that she planned to leave her popular TV series in pursuit of other professional opportunities. Since the show premiered in 2021, Rapp has starred as Regina George in the Mean Girls musical movie, after playing the same role on Broadway in 2019, and also released her debut studio album, Snow Angel.

Rapp shared news of her exit on social media, writing, “college girls moved me out to LA and introduced me to some fly favorite people.” She went on to thank series creators Mindy Kaling and Justin Noble, adding, “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.” Earlier this year, Rapp may have put her departure into further context, telling Vanity Fair: “The people in my life that I work with now care about me as a person. And I think that is a difference from things I’ve experienced in the past.”

At the start of the semester—yes, it has been nearly two years since our gals last appeared onscreen, though they are still somehow only sophomores—Leighton is freshly back from backpacking through Europe with her on-again girlfriend Alicia (Midori Francis, who is also departing Grey’s Anatomy as a series regular this season). Alicia is leaving Essex for a job in Boston, and Leighton flirts with the idea of joining her by transferring to MIT.

Torn by whether to transfer or ride out the year with her friends—Bela (Amrit Kaur), Kimberly (Pauline Chalamet), and Whitney (Alyah Chanelle Scott)—Leighton briefly tests the waters by commuting to the nearby University of Vermont for some higher-level math classes. Ultimately, she can’t ignore the opportunity to both better position her future finance career and be with the one she loves. “I met you three and you gave me the strength to be myself,” Leighton says in a tearful goodbye on their last night together, which naturally includes one final pregame in their Essex dorm.

Showrunner Justin Noble breaks down Rapp’s exit with Vanity Fair, and shares what’s to come for the show’s two new characters.

Vanity Fair: At what point in writing the third season did you learn that Reneé planned to exit the show?

Justin Noble: We were in the writers’ strike for a really long time. So by the time the strike was resolved, Mindy and I started chatting and knew we were going to write two episodes with Leighton and then send her off. We started to talk about what would feel most real to us. And this is Leighton Murray—someone who wins or doesn’t give up. So the only way Leighton would leave is if it’s what was best for her.

We talked about how she started on the show. She came in knowing herself the least compared to any of the other girls, very much projecting something that she’s not. Then over the course of 22 episodes, she really figured it out. So in many ways, it feels to me like Leighton was just the first person who excelled at the challenge of what college is. She figured out who she is, what makes for her best future, and had to weigh what that means for her.

It’s not always all roses. She had to say goodbye to people that she loves, but at the end of the day, she’s a driven character who knows what she wants and we’re going to be behind her as she goes off to get it. It also felt very real to me because between my first and sophomore year of college, one of my best friends transferred. I remember getting the phone call over the summer like, “What do you mean you’re not coming back? You’re one-third of my social circle. What am I going to do?” In that way, it makes for a really interesting creative challenge for the other girls. Leighton was a huge part of their world.

How did you figure out the circumstances under which Leighton leaves Essex?

We knew we wanted Leighton to exceed. The math thing felt real to us. It felt very funny to me that Rob Huebel, [who plays] her dad, Henry, was like this Essex Essex man. Then both of his children got into the school, and both of them left. That I do love.

One thing we talked about was the Alicia factor—whether or not we wanted them to be together, whether or not we wanted Alicia to stay in the Essex world after Leighton. But at the end of the day, that’s something that I felt stronger about than maybe some others. Leighton became who she is, frankly, so much through the inspiration of Alicia. We watched as Leighton literally transformed by having to go through the women’s center.

In season two, we did that little arc with Tatum [Gracie Dzienny], which was meant to be [that] comedically Leighton’s dating herself—the opposite of Alicia. And the cringiest thing I’ve had is seeing the comments of people being, “More Tatum, endgame Leighton-Tatum.” No, please don’t ship the pretty blonde girl with the pretty blonde girl! You’re missing the message here. She ends up with Alicia, who she’s learned from—who’s unlike anyone Leighton grew up with—for a reason.

The episode ends on a cliffhanger, teasing the arrival of a new roommate named Kacey. Did you decide to introduce Gracie Lawrence’s character in the next episode to allow Leighton space for her final moment?

Exactly. It would’ve felt too abrupt, and we were dishonoring what the girls were going through if we let one moment bleed too quickly into the next. We wanted there to be a throw forward, but I wouldn’t have wanted to take it further than seeing that little door creak open—because the audience is dealing with a shift in the show. So it felt only fitting to give them a moment to digest it, and then at the top of episode three, have them meet the new person we’d be playing around with.

I’ve been describing Kacey as Glee’s Rachel Berry meets Legally Blonde’s Elle Woods.

[Laughs] My husband is a gigantic Glee-head who’s obsessed with Rachel Berry. By the way, Lea Michele—gigantic fan of the show. Flew me out to New York to come meet with her because she loves it so much.

When we started talking about Kacey, we probably had like 800 ideas of different types of college girls who could fit the show. Kacey’s cards [in the writers’ room] started saying, “Girly Girl.” That really hasn’t been on the show before. As she became more fully formed, she reminded us of people who I knew, who writers in the room knew. And it felt like an opportunity to tell an important story about confidence that happens very slowly over the course of the season. It’s an incredibly important story for young people to see, especially young women, about finding confidence from within.

But we decided that we were going to add two girls to the show. [New cast member Mia Rodgers plays a British freshman student named Taylor.] We wanted there to be a first-year girl. Our girls are now sophomores, they think they know it all. Meanwhile, they’re like four months older than the people who are first-year students.

You’ve spoken before about how emotional it was to put Leighton’s story on TV, particularly as she explores her sexuality. Did it feel heavy to have to bring that arc to a close earlier than you planned?

Yeah. I mean, at the end it felt nice. I saw her go through different struggles through season one and season two. And I truly believe by the end of this episode that she’s come through the other side and knows who she is. I can imagine a world where Leighton Murray just kills it moving forward. She ends up as a woman in that C-suite, married with a kid that she has a complicated relationship with, just like her and her mom. So I didn’t feel bittersweet about it. If anything, I felt like we had a new opportunity to introduce other types of queer characters.

So that’s what was fun about having Taylor come in, who I think is sort of an inverse-Leighton in many ways. They have similarities, but Taylor probably came out as queer at 13. She lived life very quickly in London, as we learned from other aspects of her life. So it allows for stories of vulnerability other than the one that we already told with Leighton.

What was Reneé’s final day of shooting like?

You’re catching me at the end of what feels like two straight years of working on this season, so I’m struggling to remember what was the exact final day. However, the scene that obviously jumps to my mind is the goodbye where they’re outside underneath the little archway in episode two. That scene was incredibly impactful and moving to film for the cast, because it was real. It really was a goodbye. I tried my best to shape some of the words in that scene so that they would mirror what they were going through. It felt like Alyah was saying she was going to miss Reneé. The emotions just really pop off the screen, and I’m so proud of the way it turned out.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.