The Sex Lives of College Girls Wasn’t Looking for an Exact Rapp-lacement

Photo: Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images for Vulture

Whether you like it or not, Leighton Murray isn’t always gonna be around at Essex. At Vulture Fest 2024, The Sex Lives of College Girls co-creator Justin Noble addressed the writers’ approach to adding new cast members following Reneé Rapp’s departure from the show.

“Each show is kind of like a soup with different ingredients in it, and that’s especially true of our show, because I feel like the favorite scenes of the show are where everyone’s sitting around in the common room together, and they’re all talking about some issue and everyone has a unique perspective on it, and their lines couldn’t be delivered by any other character in the scene,� Noble said. “So as you shift things up, that is a task to figure it out.�

Rapp’s Leighton will only appear in some episodes of season three, which drops November 21 on Max. But that doesn’t mean she’ll be replaced by another super-gay, super-rich legacy student who’s really good at math. According to Noble, the SLOCG writers came up with “like 800 ideas� while discussing who new students Kacey (Gracie Lawrence) and Taylor (Mia Rodgers) would be. “We just figured out what was different from what we already have in the show,� he said. “But there are remnants of some things that Leighton will have in common with Kacey this season or with Taylor, and the same is true for the other characters.�

Alyah Chanelle Scott, who stars as Whitney, said it was “so bittersweet and so heavy and sad and so beautiful� to adjust to a new cast configuration. “You get to see us say goodbye to [Rapp] in real-time on the show,� she added. “Shooting that was very emotional, but also very silly, because she lives three minutes away from me. So it wasn’t like, bye, see you never — it was like, see you tonight!� At the same time, Scott recalled being eager to make sure that Lawrence and Rodgers would feel welcome coming into an established environment, which she hopes is something viewers also want. “I think we all had that energy of wanting to take care of them and usher them into the space,� she said. “So I think because we all came at it with such an arms-wide-open approach, it really made the group dynamic solidify in a new, fun way.�