Reneé Rapp is in her country era, y’all, and it’s all thanks to Beyoncé.
The Mean Girls star, 24, covered Beyoncé’s “Daddy Lessons” during a performance in Paris on Tuesday, February 13, admitting that she wasn’t always a fan of the genre.“I used to hate country music because of where I grew up and the culture around it,” Rapp, a North Carolina native, explained in videos taken by fans. “But Black people created country music.”
The crowd erupted into cheers as she introduced the song, saying, “So this is ‘Daddy Lessons.’”
Beyoncé dipped her toes into the country music world on her 2016 album, Lemonade.
“With his gun and his head held high / He told me not cry / Oh, my daddy said shoot,” she sings in the chorus. “With his right hand on his rifle / He swore it on the Bible / My daddy said shoot.”
Fans of “Daddy Lessons” were thrilled when Beyoncé announced her upcoming album Renaissance: Act II after teasing new music in a Verizon commercial during Super Bowl LVIII. Beyoncé went on to release two country singles on Sunday, February 11, “Texas Hold Em” and “16 Carriages.” (The rest of Act II drops on March 29.)
@khal.ali my yee haw princess 💓 i still haven’t recovered from this @reneé #beyoncé
Rapp has also had a huge year following her whirlwind Mean Girls press tour, where she showcased her “lack of media training” in candid interviews — something she even made fun of during her first SNL appearance on January 20.
In the now-viral sketch, she joked, “Yeah, I’ve been going absolutely off in every single interview lately, so now I have to do 40 hours of court ordered media training.”
The “Too Well” singer is currently on the European leg of her Snow Hard Feelings tour, with her Paris show on Tuesday being the first of 10 dates across the pond.
Rapp got her start on Broadway prior to booking her role as Leighton in HBO’s Sex Lives of College Girls. She previously played Regina George in the Broadway adaptation of Mean Girls, which she reprised for the big screen.
“It’s inherently different because when I did it on Broadway I was 19 and now I’m 23 and I’m much more comfortable in myself,” she said at the Teen Vogue Summit in November 2023 of revisiting the character.
“I also feel like I’m much more of a screen actor,” she continued. “I think that’s actually where I go artistically as opposed to stage acting. I like tiny things and I like subtleties and reading behind somebody’s eyes, which you can’t really do on stage. [Stage acting is] much more dramatic, which is also really sick, but I like the intimacy of a camera.”
