Sabrina Carpenter knows she’s too raunchy for Disney.
In a new Variety profile, the rising pop icon — who got her start on the Disney Channel series Girl Meets World in the mid-2010s — acknowledged that she’s embraced a more mature persona in the years since she left her original label, the Disney-owned Hollywood Records.
“I’m 900 inappropriate jokes away from being a Disney actor, but people still see me that way,” she told the outlet. “I’m always extremely flattered to be grouped in with the other women and girls who I’ve idolized and looked up to who came from that, but I feel very distant from it.”
Carpenter, 25, who recently shot into superstardom with the release of her hit summer single “Espresso” in April, first started making music with Hollywood Records in 2013, releasing four studio albums with the label through 2019. In 2021, the Pennsylvania native signed to Island Records, saying goodbye to her Disney past, and released her fifth album Emails I Can’t Send — her most successful to date — the following year.
“For the people who love those early records and listen to them, I love you for that,” the “Feather” singer told Variety. “But I personally feel a sense of separation from them, largely due to the shift in who I am as a person and as an artist, pre-pandemic and post-pandemic.”
Matthew Sprout/Variety
Carpenter started to show off this shift on tour when performing the outro for her song “Nonsense,” which she changes each night depending on the city or venue and are often riddled with sexual innuendos. (“Broke up ’cause the size was underwhelming / Tried to give him pointers, wasn’t helping / Maybe, I just need a boy from Melbourne,” she sang during a show in Australia.)
After gaining further recognition as an artist during her stint as the opening act for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour throughout 2023 and 2024, Carpenter started her meteoric rise when she dropped the first two singles off of her forthcoming album Short n’ Sweet: “Espresso” and “Please Please Please,” the latter of which was the star’s first song to hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
These latest songs are also ripe with adult language — “My ‘give-a-f—s’ are on vacation” and “I beg you don’t embarrass me mother f—er,” for instance — a marked tonal shift from the lyrics of the star’s early Disney days.
In her interview with Variety, however, Carpenter made sure to note that there’s a limit to her vulgarity: “I’m not posing for Playboy — just to be clear,” she said.
Matthew Sprout/Variety
And while Carpenter probably won’t be heading back to Disney anytime soon, she said she’s still open to acting, even if her pop career has prompted an “unwarranted break” from the profession. She’s just waiting for the perfect script, she told Variety, since “a lot of them sound like five other already released movies.”
The performer’s sixth album Short n’ Sweet, sure to include plenty more suggestive one-liners, is out on Aug. 23.
