Saturday Night Live: Sabrina Carpenter turns her ‘Man’s Best Friend’ persona into a performance, sparking criticism

Saturday Night Live (SNL) latest episode, released on October 18, 2025, featured singer-songwriter Sabrina Carpenter as host and musical guest for the night.

Her appearance came after her seventh studio album, Man’s Best Friend, released August 29, 2025, which had already generated considerable limelight for the music and its controversial visual and lyrical themes. 

The Saturday Night Live episode thus gave her a platform for double motives, to promote her album and a space to express herself. She performed a comic sketch playing a designer named Virginia Duffy, the opening monologue to address the controversy around her latest album's cover.

Sabrina, as a saleswoman, was selling a travel pillow for long flights, joined by Mikey Day as Rhett and Ashley Padilla as Bev, the co-hosts of a shopping infomercial channel.

But the moment took a turn as the bubble-gum pink colored cushion was stylishly draped over an upright display stand; however, its shape deliberately mirrored feminine genitals.

Sabrina used her appearance on Saturday Night Live to respond to her critics

The sketch titled Shop TV shows as Sabrina hangs the pillow on a display hook, the hosts, Rhett and Bev, instantly notice the similarity with the female organ with Mikey Day as Rhett is embarrassed and begging the producers to blur that out. He shuffles nervously and says,

Not the best angle on that.

 Meanwhile, Virginia cheerfully describes the pillow’s features and characteristics by saying that

So this outer layer here is made of memory foam, right? Okay. And then this inner layer is filled with a cooling gel.

Virginia went on to describe the product, mentioning the pillow’s faux-fur lining, the vibration feature at the top, and even told the male host’s hand to stroke the soft pink pillow. As she asks Bev if she has ever felt anything like that, to which she responds:

Oh, not since my sophomore year of college,

Rhett even asks her why she particularly brought the pink one, as she mentions that the product is available in different colors, reflecting the comedic sarcasm. The audience constantly burst out in laughter, but Sabrina kept her straight face throughout the whole pitch.

Sabrina appeared on Saturday Night Live to promote her album, Man’s Best Friend, which was announced on June 11, 2025. The main cover showed a suited faceless man yanking Sabrina's hair while she was on her hands and knees, wearing a short black bodycon dress and black heels, beside him.

The image was criticized for reinforcing regressive gender roles and was accused of pandering to the male gaze and the promotion of misogynistic stereotypes with an element of violence and control.

She then started promoting her album with another, a more suitable cover, which she herself announced on Instagram through a post made on June 25, 2025, captioning it:

I signed some copies of Man’s Best Friend for you guys

& here is a new alternate cover approved by God
available now on my website

She addressed this on Saturday Night Live in the beginning through a monologue in front of the audience, saying that,

Some people got a little, like, freaked out by the cover. I'm not sure why. But what people don't realize is that's just how they cropped it. If you zoom out, it's clearly a picture from the 50th anniversary special of Bowen helping me up by the hair.

In the opening monologue on Saturday Night Live, Carpenter leaned into her public image, joking about people perceiving her as a horndog pop star, but there's so much more to her than this, further saying,

There is a real person underneath all the sparkles and the wigs and the corsets. And another thing you might not know about me is that I love to interact with the audience

Stay tuned for more updates.