SLOCG’s Gracie Lawrence Says She Isn’t ‘Replacing’ Renee Rapp

Gracie Lawrence joined the season 3 cast of The Sex Lives of College Girls in the wake of Reneé Rapp’s exit from the Max series, but she hopes her character, Kacey, won’t be seen as a replacement for the Mean Girls actress.

“I think Kacey’s very different [from Rapp’s character, Leighton],” Lawrence, 27, exclusively told Us Weekly at iHeartRadio z100’s Jingle Ball in New York City on Friday, December 13. “There was no intention of ever feeling like it was replacing [her] or anything like that because that’s an iconic character. Leighton is a beloved iconic character. I don’t think anyone — from the creators of the show to any of the actors — would want to step on the toes of that.”

Rapp, 24, announced her exit from the series in July 2023. She appeared in two episodes of season 3, which premiered last month, before Leighton left the fictional Essex College for MIT. Lawrence then made her first appearance as Kacey, Kimberly (Pauline Chalamet), Bela (Amrit Kaur) and Whitney’s (Alyah Chanelle Scott) new roommate.

Related: How ‘Sex Lives of College Girls’ Set Up Renee Rapp’s Season 3 Exit

The Sex Lives of College Girls has already teased how Reneé Rapp’s character, Leighton, will leave the show. During the season 3 premiere on Thursday, November 21, Leighton learned that there was no accelerated math class at Essex College in Vermont after she was the only one to sign up for the course. After a disastrous […]

Lawrence told Us that the SLOCG team was “trying to do something totally new” by adding both herself and Mia Rodgers — who plays openly queer freshman Taylor — to the season 3 cast.

“They’re building out the cast with so much respect and homage to what [Rapp] brought to the show,” she explained.

Like Rapp, Lawrence has a musical background in addition to her acting repertoire. She and her brother, Clyde Lawrence, founded the pop-soul group Lawrence and have released four studio albums to date. Gracie sings on the show — Kacey auditions for a school musical while navigating a breakup — and she told Us that she doesn’t know whether the character was written to be musically inclined before she was cast.

Related: Renee Rapp Almost Starred in ‘HSMTMTS’ and It Has Us Shook

Reneé Rapp almost had her “Breaking Free” moment on High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, and the revelation has Us shook. The Mean Girls actress, 23, recently told The Hollywood Reporter that she auditioned for the Disney+ show, along with multiple singing competition shows, before nabbing her role on Sex Lives With College Girls. […]

“My sense is that they knew that they wanted to do a character that would be in the theater world and that would inherently maybe have some singing in it. I don’t know whether it was [initially] going to be this much singing or not,” she said. “The fact that Justin [Noble], the cocreator of the show, was so passionate about [the] singing being live … maybe that’s because he liked Lawrence.”

Prior to lending her talents to the show, Gracie was a fan of SLOCG “for years,” she told Us.

“I’ve recommended it to friends and always thought it was so funny and great. And then to get the opportunity to be on it was kind of trippy in a weird way,” she said. “I’d call Clyde and I’d be like, ‘I’m in the cafeteria on the show. I am in it.’ I was like, ‘I used to watch that.’ So, it’s a unique experience.”

With reporting by Molly McGuigan