Sabrina Carpenter’s cameo set

Sabrina Carpenter turned her Coachella headlining debut into a Hollywood skit on Friday night, building the set around surprise appearances from film and television stars. (deadline.com) The April 10 performance at the Empire Polo Club in Indio opened with a black-and-white short film in which Sam Elliott played a police officer pulling Carpenter over on her drive into California. Deadline and Just Jared both reported that the stage itself was framed as “SabrinaWood,” with a catwalk styled like a Walk of Fame set. (deadline.com) (justjared.com) Susan Sarandon appeared later as an older version of Carpenter in an interlude, and Will Ferrell showed up in a technician’s jumpsuit during a staged power failure near the end of the show. Deadline also reported a Samuel L. Jackson voice cameo and an onstage appearance by Corey Fogelmanis, Carpenter’s former “Girl Meets World” co-star. (deadline.com) (justjared.com) The set ran about 90 minutes, from 9:05 p.m. to 10:35 p.m., according to the festival livestream schedule. Fan-compiled setlist data shows Carpenter performed 20 songs plus the Kool & the Gang song “Hollywood Swinging,” with live debuts including “When Did You Get Hot,” “We Almost Broke Up Again Last Night,” “Such a Funny Way,” and “Sugar Talking.” (foxla.com) (setlist.fm) Coachella announced Carpenter as one of its 2026 headliners in September, alongside Justin Bieber and Karol G, for the festival’s two April weekends in Indio. Her Friday booking put her in the top slot on the first night of Weekend 1, two years after she used her 2024 Coachella appearance to debut “Espresso.” (coachellavalley.com) (yahoo.com) The cameo-heavy format matched how Carpenter has been scaling up her live shows since “Espresso” and “Please Please Please” pushed her into pop’s top tier in 2024. By 2026, Coachella was promoting her as a headliner across both April 10-12 and April 17-19 weekends, with the official YouTube livestream carrying the performance worldwide. (coachella.com) (coachellavalley.com) Clips from the set began circulating within hours, and Coachella’s official YouTube channel posted “Espresso” as a standalone live upload on April 11. The video description says it was filmed on the Main Stage during Friday’s show, and YouTube showed more than 117,000 views within about three hours of posting. (youtube.com) Carpenter is scheduled to play Coachella again on Friday, April 17, for Weekend 2. After a first-night set built like a movie lot, the clearest question for the encore is whether she changes the script or runs it back with the same cast. (setlist.fm) (coachella.com)