Why Is Renee Rapp Leaving Sex Lives of College Girls Season 3?

Reneé Rapp only has a recurring role in season 3 of The Sex Lives of College Girls after announcing her departure from the series in 2023. Fans are curious to know about why her character Leighton will no longer be in the show.

Why Is Renee Rapp Leaving ‘The Sex Lives of College Girls’?

Reneé – who plays Leighton Murray on i – is leaving the series to “pursue her solo music career amid rumors that certain cast members had questioned her bisexuality,” according to Vanity Fair, who spoke with the actress in January 2024.

“The people in my life that I work with now care about me as a person,” Reneé told the outlet. “And I think that is a difference from things I’ve experienced in the past.”

Reneé’s exit from the series was announced in July 2023. After the news broke, she took to social media to address her departure. “College Girls moved me out to LA and introduced me to some of my favorite people,” the Mean Girls star said. “2 and a half years later – it’s given me y’all and this community. Thank u Mindy [Kaling] and Justin [Noble] and everyone at Max for believing in me. 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.”

She continued, “I hope she gave y’all a little bit of that too. She’s such a tiny part of representation but even the tiny parts count. I wouldn’t be half the person I am without her and y’all. I love that bitch more than you know. I’m so excited for this season and I can’t wait for you to see what we have coming for her and the girls.”

Later that summer, Reneé explained why she wasn’t expanding further on her reasons for leaving the show. “I definitely have feelings about it and what that means for the show and me and my music,” she told People. “But I can’t really comment on anything just due to the SAG and the WGA strike. It prohibits me from talking about it. But I have a lot of feelings about it.”

The “Too Well” singer has always been adamant that music is her No. 1 priority. “[I thought], ‘I can do music on the side, like, I can just hustle,” she told Variety in 2022. “And now I’ve just kept acting [but] because it keeps supporting the music. Acting was my way into tricking everyone that I warranted attention, so that I could have this interview with you.”

In August 2023, just weeks after her SLOCG departure was announced, she told The Cut, “I always knew [music] is what I was going to do by any means necessary. So, like, f–k everything else. I was so desperate to create my own sound. It took really insane situations.”

However, just six months later, she seemed to have a change of heart. “I want to act more than ever, which I’m like, ‘Are you f–king kidding?’” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “I just didn’t think that would happen. But now I haven’t acted for a year and I miss it. Even stage acting I miss, which is confusing because I just didn’t think that would be the case. I’m developing things with people that I really, really like that I’m excited about.”

Renee Rapp’s Sexuality

While Reneé has played a lesbian character on SLOCG since 2021, she didn’t come out as gay herself until 2024 after previously publicly identifying as bisexual starting in 2022. While appearing on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast in March 2023, Reneé reflected on playing a lesbian while being in a “heteronormative relationship” in her real life during filming of season 1.

“It sucked so bad,” she admitted. “I hated going to work because I was like, ‘I don’t think I’m, like, good enough to be here. I don’t think I can be here. I don’t think I can be doing this.’ I was like, ‘Maybe I’m just trying too hard.’” She recalled constantly being “in panic” at the time, adding, “I was so freaked out by the idea of my sexuality, not being finite or people laughing at me or me laughing at myself, that I hated [the] first year of filming.”

She spoke about this again during a 2024 interview with The Hollywood Reporter while admitting that leaving SLOCG was “hard for so many reasons.” The “Snow Angel” songstress explained, “Recently, on TikTok, [I watched] this scene in season 1 where I come out to another character as a lesbian, and I’m crying, sobbing. And I hadn’t seen that scene in years. It’s so interesting that, at the time, I wasn’t even aware that what I was experiencing in my own personal life was actually exactly what I was doing on screen. I was in a relationship with a man, incredibly confused, unsure of myself, feeling so insecure in my acting. And I watched the scene the other day and I was like, ‘Wow, I feel so lucky to have that.’”

She continued, “That’s something I would show my kids. So when I watched it back, I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s hard to leave that.’ And I’m also so grateful that I was able to have that moment. Not only was it helpful to other people, it was crazy for me. Crazy helpful and also crazy hard. Because I’m like, ‘Why am I freaking out all the time?’ I would go home and I would call my friends and I’d be like, ‘I think I’m a lesbian, but I really love my boyfriend.’ I would want to be with him but I [saw] him more as a friend. So not only was I doing that on the show, publicly, in a big way to so many people, and my family, who had no idea that I was gay, I was also going through it personally. It is f–king crazy to watch that back.”

Is Leighton in Season 3 of ‘The Sex Lives of College Girls’?

Fans of the show won’t be left hanging with Leighton’s storyline. Reneé is in season 3 as a recurring character and was heavily featured in the first episode, which aired on November 21, 2024.

However, the storyline already seems to be setting up Leighton’s departure from the fictional Essex College. During the season 3 premiere, Leighton found out that the math course she wanted to take was no longer being offered because no other students qualified to take it. Her professor suggested a similar course at the University of Vermont, which she would have to travel by bus to attend a few times a week.

After just one trip, Leighton already seemed exhausted by the commute, so her professor suggested a transfer to a college that would fit her academic needs better. He suggested the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston. With Leighton’s girlfriend, Alicia (Midori Francis), already relocating to Boston for a job, the mathematics expert seemed keen on the idea of transferring.

“The only way that she would leave is if it was for her best self moving forward,” cocreator Justin told TVLine. “And the thing that felt interesting to me is Leighton starts our show knowing herself the least of our core group. She comes in pretending to be something she’s not, and over 22 episodes, we’ve watched her not only figure out who she is as a person, but own it so confidently.”

Max has not confirmed how many episodes Reneé will appear in during season 3.