Sabrina Carpenter arrests Margaret Qualley, snubs Jack Antonoff at L.A. show

Sabrina Carpenter is making one final arrest.

The “Espresso” singer jokingly locked up a prominent artist whose career has exploded over the last few years — but not the one that it initially looked like. Screens at the Kia Forum showed music producer Jack Antonoff hanging out in the audience near the end of Carpenter’s set at her final U.S. show on the Short n’ Sweet Tour in Los Angeles on Monday.

Carpenter has flirtatiously “arrested” celebrity spectators at previous Short n’ Sweet shows “for being too hot,” including Millie Bobby Brown, Rachel Sennott, and Marcello Hernández as his viral Saturday Night Live character Domingo — so it appeared that she was about to do the same to Antonoff, who produced four songs on her latest album. “This is super awkward,” Carpenter said to her collaborator from the stage. “I’m almost so confident that you could produce someone even hotter than you.”

Antonoff then pulled actress Margaret Qualley, whom he married last year, into the cameras’ view, and Carpenter indicated that she was only interested in arresting the Maid star. “Now that, this right there ladies and gentlemen: this is a hottie with substance,” Carpenter joked, referencing Qualley’s latest project.

“Whoever made you, God bless them, God bless their genetics,” Carpenter continued, seemingly in reference to the fact that Qualley’s mother is Andie MacDowell (though Qualley has played sci-fi characters synthetically engineered by Demi Moore and Willem Dafoe in The Substance and Poor Things, so there’s room for interpretation here). “What’s your name? Margaret? My name is Sabrina, and I think that Margaret and Sabrina are good names to be in a relationship together.”

Carpenter then launched into the setup for her song “Juno.” “Oh my God, my clothes just fell off, Margaret, I was thinking about us,” the singer said as she disrobed on stage. “My clothes just came Antonoff.”

The moment caps the biggest year to date for both Carpenter and Qualley. The singer’s single “Espresso” shot to global popularity, becoming one of 2024’s undisputed songs of the summer (and prompting Ariana Grande’s off-pitch SNL version with Hernández months later). She followed up with the Antonoff-produced “Please Please Please,” which became her first number one single, and Short n’ Sweet eventually debuted in September as her first number one album.

Meanwhile, Qualley headlined Ethan Coen’s lesbian road caper Drive-Away Dolls, played four characters in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness, and co-led The Substance, which has earned widespread acclaim as one of the buzziest horror films of the year and quickly became the highest grossing movie in distributor Mubi’s history.

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