Susan Sarandon spent nearly seven minutes onstage at Coachella last night delivering a dramatic monologue as an older version of Sabrina Carpenter.
The 79-year-old Oscar winner sat in a classic car wearing a crisp white shirt and the audience of one of the most anticipated festival headlining sets in recent memory watched it happen in the middle of the California desert.
Carpenter headlined the first night of Coachella 2026 on Friday April 10, taking the main stage just past 9 p.m.
The theme was vintage Hollywood, she called it “Sabrinawood,” and the set was built around elaborate production, multiple costume changes, pre-taped cinematic segments, and a string of celebrity appearances that made the night feel more like a film premiere than a standard pop concert.
Sam Elliott played a suspicious cop who pulled her over in the opening black-and-white short film. Will Ferrell appeared midway through as the festival’s grumpy on-call electrician after the power supposedly short-circuited.
Corey Fogelmanis, her former Girl Meets World co-star, played a waiter at a drive-in theater. Samuel L. Jackson contributed a voiceover during “Juno” as what he described as a “spiritual guide,” telling the Coachella crowd, in his specific way, to relax.
But Sarandon was the one people are talking about this morning.
What Did Susan Sarandon Do?
The segment appeared roughly in the middle of the set. Sarandon was playing a fictionalized older version of Carpenter, the idea being that this is who Sabrina might become.
She sat in a classic car in a crisp white shirt and delivered a wistful, nearly seven-minute monologue about what it was like to be a star in her prime and what a future niece might one day think of her legacy.
The stage lights dimmed around her. The crowd listened. Seven minutes is a long time in the middle of a pop concert.
Variety called it “bizarre” and described the interlude as “a bungled reflection on wish fulfillment” that “brought the pop show to a screeching halt.”
The Independent took a different view, calling Sarandon “a stand-out” and reporting that fans on social media were already calling the Sarandon-Carpenter pairing “iconic.”
Both things can be true simultaneously, a moment can be polarizing and memorable at once, and Sarandon committing fully to a seven-minute dramatic monologue at a music festival is, whatever else you want to say about it, committed.
After the monologue ended the entire stage transformed into a giant dance studio for the next section of the show. The whiplash was intentional.
The Rest Of The Set
Carpenter opened with a black-and-white pre-taped short film of herself driving a 1950s classic car down a dark desert road to Kool & the Gang’s “Hollywood Swinging.”
Elliott’s cop pulled her over and warned her not to go to California, “You know it’s not right out there. It’s wrong.” She eventually arrived at a drive-in that revealed itself to be the Coachella festival site.
She emerged from the car onto a catwalk styled as her own Hollywood Walk of Fame and kicked off the show with “House Tour,” her new Man’s Best Friend single that dropped its music video just days before the performance.
The set was deliberately front-loaded. Three of her four biggest songs arrived in the first twenty minutes, creating an early peak that reviewers noted left something of a lull in the middle, which is where the extended Sarandon segment landed.
Carpenter performed “Taste,” “Busy Woman,” and “Manchild” in the opening run. During “Manchild” she was surrounded by dancers costumed as poodles and Dalmatians.
During “Juno,” Samuel L. Jackson’s voiceover replaced her signature celebrity arrest bit.
The arrest segment had been the subject of intense pre-show speculation, there were rumors circulating, fueled by the gossip account Deuxmoi, that Madonna would be the celebrity placed in Carpenter’s signature cuffs.
Madonna did not appear.
Carpenter wore a sequined red minidress opening the show, moved to a sheer black lace bodysuit for a medley, and later appeared in a gold sequined bodysuit with a flowing cape while a clip from the film Some Like It Hot played during the costume change, one of several film references threaded through the night including nods to Chicago and Dirty Dancing.
The stage at various points transformed into a recording studio, a dive bar, and the dance studio that followed Sarandon’s appearance.
Anya Taylor-Joy was spotted in the crowd during “Please Please Please,” visibly singing along.
The show closed on a Broadway-inspired set piece with flashing marquees reading “Icon in Motion” and “She’ll Dream Come True It for Ya!”
Carpenter reflected from the stage on the last time she played Coachella — in 2024, where she performed a smaller slot and released “Espresso” the night before.
Virtually no one in the crowd knew the words. She had joked in her “Nonsense” outro that day that she would “see you back here when I headline.”
Standing at Coachella two years later as the headliner, she held an espresso martini glass and told the crowd, “Two years ago, I wanted to put out a little song before Coachella. And now I think you might know the fucking words.”
She closed with “Tears,” sitting on a throne that rose from a car as a water sprinkler system fired into the desert night air. Then she got back in the car and drove off.
The Man’s Best Friend track “We Almost Broke Up Last Night” received its live debut at the show.
Coachella 2026 Makes Headlines Worldwide
Coachella 2026 runs across two weekends, April 10-12 and April 17-19, at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California.
The headliners this year are Carpenter on Friday, Justin Bieber on Saturday, and Karol G on Sunday, making Karol G the first Latina to headline Coachella. Carpenter will headline again next weekend for Week 2.
One note on the night as a whole: Anyma, the Italian-American DJ and one half of the EDM duo Tale of Us, had been scheduled to follow Carpenter’s set at midnight.
That performance was cancelled. The festival sent a notification to attendees at 12:17 a.m. stating that due to “strong wind conditions affecting Anyma’s stage build, he is unable to perform.”
Susan Sarandon is 79 years old. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Dead Man Walking in 1995 and is one of the most recognizable actresses in Hollywood history.
Last night she delivered a seven-minute dramatic monologue in the middle of a pop concert in the California desert as a future version of a 26-year-old singer and the crowd watched the entire thing.
