Sabrina Carpenter walked into Seth Meyers’ Day Drinking segment, looked him dead in the eye, and told him he had a great career. Meyers almost fell over. ‘Almost no one says that during Day Drinking,’ he admitted, visibly thrown. It was the kind of disarming, quick-footed move that set the tone for everything that followed: a genuinely funny, occasionally disgusting, and surprisingly warm afternoon of cocktail chaos built entirely around Carpenter’s catalog.
The drinks that should not have worked
The first round was called the Manchild, a combination of whiskey and Capri Sun. Carpenter pointed out, entirely reasonably, that she was a kid ‘so much more recently’ and offered to stab the straw through the foil pouch herself. After one sip, Meyers was unambiguous: ‘That’s bad, and I never want it again.’ Carpenter diagnosed the problem immediately. ‘You wanted a man, not a manchild.’ She was right.
The second drink, inspired by Carpenter’s song ‘Short n Sweet,’ involved blending a short bottle of mostly-foam beer with Skittles, Smarties, Lifesavers, Jolly Ranchers, Sour Patch Kids, candy corn, Lemonheads, and gummy bears. The blender struggled. The color was alarming. Meyers compared the finished result to ‘the slurry if you ground up a human body,’ which he acknowledged would ruin it. Carpenter took a sip anyway and called it really good, without hesitation.
The standout was the Sabrina Colada, an ambitious construction that mapped five songs onto five ingredients: coffee liqueur for ‘Espresso,’ Alaskan amber ale for ‘Juno,’ house wine for ‘House Tour,’ hard Mountain Dew, and ice cream sprinkles for ‘Nonsense.’ After a pre-blend that turned the pitcher into what Carpenter described as ‘a million pounds,’ they toasted the very first Sabrina Colada ever consumed. Carpenter declared it fantastic, then asked if her roommates would enjoy it. Meyers gently reminded her she was doing very well in New York City. ‘Baby steps,’ she said.
The innuendo round that nearly broke both of them
The back half of the afternoon featured a game where Carpenter had to pull random prompts from a bag and deliver them to camera as innuendos. If she sold it convincingly, Meyers would take a shot. The Wolf Blitzer one did not land. A pharmaceutical disclaimer about methotrexate and pregnancy produced one of the more physically uncomfortable silences on late-night television. Then came the dreidel. Carpenter went all in, voice and everything, with ‘I made it out of clay. And when my dreidel’s ready…’ Meyers did not take a shot. He did, however, fall relatively silent, which in its own way was a win.
The segment ended with Meyers revealing that he had asked his team to prepare 100 prompts. They came back with eight.
The straw Carpenter was still resting on
Near the end of one tasting, Meyers looked over and noticed Carpenter had her lips still resting on her straw, not drinking, just leaning there. ‘Did you fall asleep on your straw?’ he asked. ‘I’ve never seen somebody rest on their straw.’
She did not especially have an answer for that.
The Sabrina Colada, ice cream sprinkles and all, remains the only drink from the afternoon that either of them would voluntarily make again. Carpenter said her roommates would love it. She sounded like she meant it.
