Reneé Rapp: I Was Drugged & Assaulted After Being Left At L.A. Hotel By Friends
By Kelly Coffey-Behrens on February 28, 2024 at 3:45 PM EST
'Mean Girls' star Reneé Rapp is opening up about the time when she was drugged and assaulted after she was left by her friends at an L.A. hotel.
The 24-year-old actress, who rose to fame for her role as Regina George in 'Mean Girls' on Broadway and in the latest 'Mean Girls' film, is telling her story and letting down her walls to reveal she was once assaulted after being drugged at a hotel in Los Angeles.
Reneé Rapp Reveals She Was Drugged & Assaulted In Los Angeles
Rapp, who is releasing a new single titled 'Snow Angel', opened up about her past struggles, and how they have shaped the woman she is today.
“I still feel like I’m sorting through those feelings,” she told The Hollywood Reporter in her latest cover story interview. “I do understand that it was an incredibly traumatic experience that I don’t remember at all. And it feels weird to talk about because I don’t remember it.”
Her latest single is inspired by the tragic event, despite having trouble remembering what exactly happened as she was drugged. -- and she blames the friends she was with that night for letting that happen to her.
Reneé Rapp Blames Her "Friends" For Allowing The Assault to Happen
“I just recently started to be like, ‘Wait, the people that let this happen to me suck.’ I recently was like, ‘I actually don’t want to follow this person on Instagram anymore because they left me at a club to get drugged.’ God knows what happened to me,” she said.
Although the 'Mean Girls' actress just recently unfollowed those so-called friends, she admitted she "always knew" they were not really true to her.
“I also think, in hindsight, I was really struggling with my sexuality and I was like, ‘OK, well, this boy is kind of giving me validation, and this is a straight group of people,’” Rapp said.
"I knew, but I didn’t know to the extent, and I made a lot of excuses for it, but all my friends knew. [They] were like, 'What the f— is going on? You realize you’ve been out every single night and it’s a Tuesday. That’s wild.'
The tragic event took place two years ago in an L.A. hotel. “I woke up in a bathroom stall, face up in The Beverly Hilton with blood on my pants. And had been left alone at that point for like seven hours,” she recalled of the incident.
Although the drugging and assault is something Rapp continues to relive every day, she decided to open up about that time in her life and use the experience to help inspire her 'Saturday Night Live' performance of her new single.
“I was like, ‘OK, well, when we do 'SNL', if I’m doing this [song], I am doing this.’ I will be on a red floor and I need to start laying down because that’s how I woke up. And there should be red underneath me and I should be in all white,” she told the outlet of her 'SNL' performance.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).