Sabrina Carpenter’s Highlights In Movies & TV

Before selling out arenas and touring with Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter had a bustling acting career, starring in a slew of movies and television shows.

Her first on-screen role was in an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a small part where she interacted with Detective Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni) about a case involving underage explicit content. It was a mature role for Carpenter, who went on to beef up her resume with many other film & TV credits.

However, the “Please, Please, Please” singer eventually followed a path in performing – a move Whitney Cummings applauded while revealing Carpenter was previously passed up for a role on The Connors, an ABC series in which the comedian briefly served as a showrunner.

“Sabrina Carpenter auditioned…and it wasn’t the right fit. She got a rejection that day when we were casting the daughter,” Cummings told People in a November 2024 interview. “And by the way, thank God we said no to her,” the podcast host continued. “Because she’d be stuck on a sitcom set and not being Sabrina Carpenter.”

But before Carpenter nearly joined the Roseanne spinoff and became the pop superstar she is today, the “Espresso” singer was getting recognized in other various projects, which die-hard fans will remember. Here are the TV and movie gigs the pop star landed long before sharing the stage with Christina Aguilera on her Short n’ Sweet Tour.

Girl Meets World (2014-2017)

Carpenter had some guest appearances on various TV shows (i.e., Law & Order: SVU in 2011; Orange Is the New Black in 2013; Austin & Ally in 2013), and made her voice known in shows like Phineas and Ferb, Mikey Murphy’s Law, and Sofia the First. But it wasn’t until she scored a role on Girl Meets World that she got her big break.

The Disney Channel series is a spinoff of the 1990s sitcom Boy Meets World, in which Carpenter played Maya, a friend of Riley Mathews (Rowan Blanchard), the daughter of the original series’ Cory (Ben Savage), and Topanga Mathews (Danielle Fishel). At just 14 years old, Carpenter was a natural in front of the camera, though her Girl Meets World castmates aren’t surprised she strayed away from the acting scene.

During the Nov. 25 episode of the Pod Meets World podcast, Fishel shared her support for Carpenter and how she always believed she had a bright future beyond the show. “If you’ve ever been in the Forum club, which is like the lounge, every time, they make a cake. A big cake with the artist’s face on it,” the actress explained. “And for 10 years now, a little over 10 years, I have known Sabrina, and every time I’ve been to the Forum in those 10 years, and I see an artist, I take a picture of their cake.”

Girl Meets World ran from 2014 to 2017 and featured appearances from other Boy Meets World alums, including Rider Strong, Will Friedle, William Daniels, Lee Norris, William Russ, and more.

Tall Girl (2019)

In 2019, Carpenter made her Netflix debut in the streamer’s original movie Tall Girl, playing Harper, the lead character Jodi’s (Ava Michelle) sister. The film explores Jodi’s challenges as a 6-foot-1 teenager navigating high school while towering over her classmates and much shorter sister.

The movie got mixed reviews, as did its sequel, Tall Girl 2, which dropped three years later. However, some of the cast (which includes Griffin Gluck, Luke Eisner, Paris Berelc, Clara Wisley, Steve Zahn, and Angela Kinsey) revealed in a February 2022 interview with J-14 that they’d be open to continuing the story with more Tall Girl films. It’s unknown if Carpenter would be on board.

Regardless, Carpenter’s Tall Girl co-stars have praised her success, with Gluck, Eisner, and Michelle congratulating the actress on social media in 2019 when she took home the Jury Award for “Best Performance” for her portrayal of Nola in The Short History of the Long Road at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival – a victory they called “well-deserved.”

Work It (2020)

Carpenter returned to Netflix in 2020, starring in the comedy/musical Work It, where she had to strip away her dancing skills for her less-coordinated character Quinn. The story follows Quinn, who forms a dance group to compete in a competition and secure a spot at the college of her dreams. However, Quinn and her crew aren’t the most experienced dancers, making their goal all the more challenging.

But for Carpenter, who danced five to six days a week at a young age, purposely performing badly in front of the camera was no easy feat.

“I really dance poorly throughout most of the film, but that also became more of a challenge,” the entertainer told Elle magazine in an August 2020 interview. “Sometimes it was really great to be the one who had to dance poorly, and then other times, watching everyone killing it, I really wanted to be dancing better than I had to be,” she admitted.

The film also stars Keiynan Lonsdale, Liza Koshy, Jordan Fisher, Drew Ray Tanner, and Michelle Buteau.

The Hate U Give (2018)

In the powerful coming-of-age teen drama The Hate U Give, Carpenter played Hailey, a friend of Starr Carter (Amandla Stenberg), who fought to have her voice heard after a police officer fatally shot her childhood best friend. The story came before the Black Lives Matter movement erupted in 2020 following unarmed black man George Floyd’s death at the hands of white cop Derek Michael Chauvin, further shining a light on the corruption of law enforcement.

The film also stars big names like Regina Hall, Common, Anthony Mackie, Russell Hornsby, Issa Rae, and K.J. Apa. Carpenter opened up in a July 2018 interview with Hero magazine about what attracted her to the movie. “We can never really form our own opinion because we are sort of forced to believe what we’re shown,” the “Nonsense” singer said.

“Hearing this story through a young girl’s words…it makes you feel the situation in such a different way. I wanted to be a part of it in any way that I could, and I do know that it’s such an important film for so many people.”

Adventures in Babysitting (2016)

In the earlier days of Carpenter’s career, the Pennsylvania native starred in the Disney Channel movie Adventures in Babysitting, playing half of a pair of rival babysitters opposite Sofia Carson, who’s forced to team up to track down one of their kids who accidentally wanders away in a big city. The film, a remake of the 1987 movie, was a hit, earning 86 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and it was Carpenter’s first lead role.

While the film led to some great opportunities for Carpenter in the acting world, she recently confessed there’s one part that’s a bit “triggering” for the star today. During an August 2024 sit down with Cosmopolitan, Carpenter revealed a scene in the film where she raps, which has been repeatedly shared online, isn’t her fondest memory.

“That one’s a bit triggering for me,” the “Feather” singer told the outlet. “You wanna know why? Because this has resurfaced online in times where I don’t need it to.” Carpenter also said the moment “haunts me in my sleep” and wouldn’t initially reveal it was the scene in Adventures in Babysitting that she was referencing.

“It was one of my favorite movies,” Carpenter said of the original film, “so to get to remake it and to kind of play a newer version of that character was really cool. It just unfortunately did have a scene where I had to rap.”