Reneé Rapp Is Ready for Her Close-Up

The Sex Lives of College Girls' star is finally making the music she's always dreamed of

- BRITTANY SPANOS

Reneé rapp hasn’t been sleeping well. The past six months have been a bit of a sleep-deprived haze for the singer and actress, full of weird or straight-up horrific dreams. Most of the time, she’s being booed off a stage. Once, she dreamed about murdering a person she had just started dating. The night before we talk, she had one so bad she doesn’t want to repeat it. “It was a really not-great thing to dream about,” she says.

Her subconscious isn’t the only thing that’s been keeping her up in recent months. Last year, with her career already gaining speed thanks to her starring role in Mindy Kaling’s hit Max comedy, The Sex Lives of College Girls, Rapp released her first EP as a musician, Everything to Everyone, and set out on a headlining tour in December. That winter, she started working on her full-length debut, due out this summer on Interscope. In January, she traveled to Europe for more shows. In March, she settled into New Jersey to film Mean Girls: The Musical — the movie adaptation of the Broadway show based on the 2004 film, in which she will star as Regina George. And when we speak in mid-May, she’s busy looking for a new home.

“I feel like it’s September in my brain but it’s May in practice,” she says. She packed a lot into the two months she had in New Jersey; her album team, including producer and friend Alexander 23 as a key member, began spending time on the East Coast to help her finish the LP on weekends and late nights after filming.

“When someone is like, ‘Are you down to work every weekend?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, of course. You fucking kidding me?’ ” Rapp, 23, says. “Then I do a week of filming and I’m like a fucking zombie.”