Sabrina Carpenter leaned into a “Thelma & Louise” theme with her weekend-two Coachella appearance Friday by featuring Geena Davis reading the mid-show monologue as an older “Aunt Sabrina,” succeeding last weekend’s guest Susan Sarandon.
The monologue was half the length of Sarandon’s uncomfortably overlong version last weekend, lending credence to rumors that Sarandon had been asked to stretch and improvise due to a technical delay.
Her appearance was doubly a surprise as it came amid hurricane-force rumors that Madonna will be joining Carpenter during the show, which led many to wonder if she would perform the monologue instead of Sarandon, only to find that she was being saved for an actual musical appearance later in the show.
Sitting in one of the 1950s cars that are a theme of Carpenter’s set, amid a makeshift drive-in theater lot in the middle of the field, Davis read through a monologue that preceded largely along the lines of last weekend’s script. However, the young drive-in carhop, played by her former “Girl Meets World” TV costar Corey Fogelmanis, arrived after three and a half minutes instead of seven to help her settle up her tab.
Even though the monologue hit many of the same beats as last week’s, it was paraphrased throughout. Sarandon opened with: “What a moron I was. Running around like nobody’s going to judge you, just bippity boppity boo. When of course, everybody’s judging you.” Davis’ opening: “What a moron. I was running around like that carefree, all hippity, skippity…”
The many trims that cut the speech in half included losing somewhat audience-confusing references to a fictional sister, Laurie, who Sarandon-as-Sabrina said “was always really uncomfortable whenever I was the center of attention. Sometimes she would just ignore what I was doing or other times she would shit on me. And probably she’s putting down my career right now…” Also dropped was the whole wistful/inspirational final part of the monologue, in which Sarandon had spoken of “that little voice (where) you say, fuck it, I can do this. I can do whatever I put my mind to… Why do people stop saying that to themselves when they become 12 years old?”
Later in the set, Will Ferrell was succeeded in his comedic role as an electrician by Terry Crews, playing the same part, but with different dialogue, and without the failed attempt to light a cigarette.
Of course, Madonna ultimately provided the mother of all cameos with a medley/duet of her hits… and extended astrology talk that threatened to erase the memory of any filibustering that might have gone on during Sarandon’s speech the previous week.
