Sabrina Carpenter on Breaking Out of the Disney Mold
Sabrina Carpenter has changed, and she wants the world to know it. After spending her teen years on Girl Meets World and releasing two pop albums, the bubbly singer-actress-who is Seventeen's August/September cover star-is ready to immerse herself in dramatic roles (first up: the less than likable Hailey in this fall’s Black Lives Matter–inspired drama, The Hate U Give) and to embrace a new dance-floor sound. (Watch for her third album, Singular, later this year.) She’s also still figuring a lot out.
“It’s funny being 19,” she says. “When you turn 18, everyone goes, ‘You’re an adult now. Enjoy it.’ Then you turn 19, and they go, ‘It’s your last year as a teenager. Enjoy it.’ So what am I?”
She’s someone who is savoring every moment now-and pumped for what’s ahead.
Here's a peek at what else she told Seventeen:
On acting and wanting to play a not-so-nice girl: “I was a huge fan of the book The Hate U Give. When I got the audition, I was like, ‘There’s only one character I can play.’ It’s Hailey, the ignorant white girl. That was really scary. I was like, ‘Okay, I hope people separate me from the character.’ It’s a touchy subject, and you don’t want to get it wrong.”
On the lyrics in her new album Singular (out later this year): “When I turned 18, [music execs] would say things like, ‘People will take you seriously a lot quicker if you just get out there with the mature content.’ But I felt that I shouldn’t write about that stuff just because I’m 18; I need to do it if I’m actually going through it-and I was never that kid who was doing the [more mature] personal life stuff. I love love, I love getting in depth about it, and I experience all the normal 19-year-old feelings, but I wanted to be cautious.”
On dealing with the pressure of fame on social media: “I used to use the Internet as a way to figure out the things I wanted to know, and now I find out things that I don’t want to know. About everything . . . about myself, a lot of the time. Using the Internet as a place to attack people, or to share negative opinions of someone, has always been a really strange concept to me. I look at social media as a way to be a teenager with my friends-to see what my friends are up to and to see their comments. Everyone is going to have an opinion of you all the time, but at the end of the day, I try not to take it too seriously. Until you’re face-to-face with me, it’s not really real.”
On facing her anxiety: “It’s probably my biggest struggle, and something I don’t really talk about… It’s scary when you don’t know how to describe what you’re feeling. Your head is running quicker than your mouth, and you think, I’ve never seen myself like this before. It could be stress…it could be teenage hormones. But when it becomes more serious, you have to take care of yourself. So I did. I got to that point in the past two years. And I’m working through it.”
On her relationships with her Girl Meets World co-stars: “Corey [Fogelmanis] has been a big supporter in my life. He’s so funny and smart. And he’s a great friend-but never [more than that]. Oh, my God-I don’t know how many times I’ve had to say that! The thing is, when you have a best friend like that and you’re so comfortable with them, you’ll hug them, you’ll jump on their back, you’ll have sleepovers. But we’re really just friends… The last time I saw Rowan [Blanchard], we were in Paris [in March], and that was so fun, because that was our childhood dream. When we finally got to go there together, it was very special.”
To hear more from Sabrina, pick up the August/September issue of Seventeen, on newsstands July 17!
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