US singer and actress Renee Rapp said she had “the greatest morning of my life” after receiving a bouquet of flowers from her “idol” Beyonce.
Mean Girls star Rapp was sent the gift after performing a rendition of Beyonce’s country-themed track Daddy Lessons at a show in Paris earlier this month, where she told fans that black artists created country music.
Speaking about the flowers, Rapp told The Hollywood Reporter: “I’ve never been speechless in my life, it’s literally going to make me cry.
“She is everything — and the reason that I know how to sing.
“I would sit down and listen to her different tonalities and phonics and phrasing styles and be like, ‘Please, Jesus, let me be able to do this’.”
She joked she will turn the flowers into rose water “Beyon-spray” to keep her anxieties at bay, adding: “(I’m) going to dry the flowers and I’m going to frame them.”
The 24-year-old, who starred as Regina George in the Broadway musical of Mean Girls before landing a role in the film’s remake, left her regular role in The Sex Lives of College Girls to release her debut album Snow Angel last year.
“Ultimately, I’m not making music to just make music. I’m making music to start conversations. My idols make culture, my idols start conversation. That’s what I love,” she said.
Rapp said the title song Snow Angel was about an “incredibly traumatic” sexual assault in a hotel bathroom, an experience she attempted to recreate during a performance of the song on Saturday Night Live.
The track titled I Do is a platonic love song to her best friend and The Sex Lives of College Girls co-star Alyah Chanelle Scott.
“I don’t even think I’ve ever told her that I wrote it about her,” she said. “But I remember being like, ‘I love you so much, and this feels so romantic in a platonic way, but I don’t understand how to explain it’.
“And I now know that it was so much more complicated in my sexuality. And I was like, ‘Wait, you feel completely different to me than a boy does, and I love you. So am I in love with you?’.
“And I now know that she’s just my f****** rock, and I just don’t think I like boys.”
The actress-turned-singer said she had only recently started referring to herself as a lesbian.
Rapp, who is set to make her Coachella debut in April, said she did not make it past the first round of talent shows including America’s Got Talent, American Idol, The Voice US and High School Musical: The Musical: The Series before landing the Broadway role.