Sabrina Carpenter didn’t just host Saturday Night Live this week, she consumed, digested, and had seconds. Host/musical guest double-duty, the 26-year-old pop star turned Studio 8H into a messy sleepover, complete with microphone hairbrushes, satin PJs, and enough wink wink camp to satisfy the gays, the girls, and the popstar starved multitudes all at once.
The “Manchild” Moment That Put Twitter in Hysterics
For her performance of Manchild, Sabrina strutted onto a bedroom-themed set in SNL-branded PJs and immediately reminded us why she’s the industry’s current It Girl. Singing into a hairbrush like she was headlining Madison Square Garden, Carpenter leaned all the way into the track’s tongue-in-cheek bite, a satirical anthem about grown men who still act like teenage boys.
She didn’t deliver a traditional TV performance, opting instead to go full-on theater kid chic: outrageous choreo, cheeky camera winking, and the sort of earnest yet conscious stagecraft that makes her the probable inheritor of all the campy pop queens that came before.
Social media, naturally, imploded.
- “Just wearing panties on Live tv btw, youre 26.”
- “waitttt the mic being a brush she’s so funnnny for that”
- “soooo fresh and exciting to watch as I love when popstars love their job”
- “I don’t even like white girls like that at all, but she do something to me”
- “She’s too lighthearted, yet at the same time, utterly calculating… peak popstar satire.”
The general consensus? Sabrina gave what needed to be given.
From Bedroom Fantasy to Dojo Drama
Later in the show, Carpenter traded the silk sleepover aesthetic for a karate dojo appearance in order to premiere the live Nobody’s Son. Where Manchild was lace-trimmed bedlam, Nobody’s Son was sharp, snappy, and deliberate, and she can in reality perform stunts and deliver the vocals.
Comedy Queen in Training
When she wasn’t belting, Sabrina was stretching her comedy credentials throughout the SNL sketches. She played the repeat role as member of Kelsey’s dysfunctional crew in a Domino sketch, headlined a horror movie preview concerning couples with last-minute plans (guilty as charged), interviewed Donald Trump as the host of a podcast called Snack Homies, pitched a salacious neck pillow on QVC, and guested as Bowen Yang’s prom date. Translation: she was no mere guest, she was the entire damn show.
The Short n’ Sweet Period Continues
The SNL takeover by Carpenter arrives mere weeks before the next installment of her Short n’ Sweet Tour gets started later in the month. If these live shows pretend half as much as her “Manchild” stage show, the audience best prep their systems for sugar shock and comas of serotonin.
Sabrina Carpenter not only performed SNL, she also made everyone remember that pop music is the fun, non-serious, and tasty mess it’s supposed to be. The girls are in school. The boys are embarrassed. And Sabrina? She’s in charge of the syllabus.
