Reneé Rapp knows the internet has been discussing her apparent lack of media training — and she’s reclaiming the joke.
Rapp, 24, joined Saturday Night Live host Jacob Elordi and cast member Bowen Yang for a Saturday, January 20, sketch about news outlets trying to read celebrities’ lips after Selena Gomez and Emily Blunt’s respective Golden Globes conversations.
“Why are you doubting us? Do you have no respect for our deep body of work?” Yang, 33, quipped to his costars Heidi Gardner and Ego Nwodim, who were playing TV presenters.
Yang and Elordi, 26, portrayed supposed lip-reading experts, who entrusted their “little lesbian intern Reneé” to further prove that they could accurately report on the celebs’ conversations. (Rapp, in real life, has publicly come out as bisexual.)
“I’ve been going absolutely off in every single interview lately, so now I have to do 40 hours of court-ordered media training,” Rapp, playing herself, quipped in the sketch.
Rapp then joined Yang and Elordi as they attempted to falsely lip-read Gwyneth Paltrow’s court testimony from her 2023 ski crash trial. After speculating that the testimony was pleading guilty to murder, Rapp paid homage to Paltrow’s lifestyle brand.
“Yeah, I totally did with a big knife,” Rapp added. “Goop, Goop, Goop. Love you, baby!”
Rapp has recently been on a press tour to promote her role as Regina George in the new Mean Girls movie musical. After being interviewed by multiple outlets, she later went viral for her unfiltered comments.
During her January 14 appearance on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen, Rapp described herself as “very ageist.”
“I just feel like, I don’t know, I was always the young one in situations [and] millennial women were always coming for me,” she explained to host Andy Cohen. “I was like, ‘Shut up.’ … I fear [getting older one day]. Well, I fear because I’m ageist [and] I talk so much s—t.”
In another recent interview, Rapp told Mean Girls costar Christopher Briney about “a man who owns a bus touring company” named Buddy, who is “such an asshole.”
“He was so disrespectful to my friends Priscilla and Bella who I work with and to my mother,” she ranted while Briney, 25, covered his face with his hands. “If you’re watching this, I can’t stand you, and I hope your business burns. You are so disrespectful and so misogynistic. I hate you. … F—k you, Buddy.”
Rapp’s apparently unhinged interviews subsequently received plenty of attention on social media.
“We have to protect Renee Rapp from media training at all costs,” one social media user wrote via X, as another added, “Honestly please keep the media training away from Renee Rapp she is exactly who she needs to be and we LOVE her for that.”
A third pointed out, “The thing I can’t stand about this conversation about Renee Rapp needing media training is that she literally has it. She is media trained, she’s just also herself.”
The Sex Lives of College Girls star also got in on the joke. “Her lack of media training is outrageous,” Rapp wrote via Instagram on Wednesday, January 17, sharing a carousel of photos from the past week.
Saturday Night Live airs on NBC Saturdays at 11:30 p.m. ET.
