Barry Keoghan and Sabrina Carpenter Dave Benett/VF24/WireImage for Vanity Fair
Sabrina Carpenter likes to keep her relationship with Barry Keoghan as private as possible — but when it came to casting the male lead for her ‘Please Please Please’ video, there was only one choice.
In an interview with CBS Sunday Morning, the singer, 25, explained that she picked Keoghan, 31, because he’s such a great actor. “I, genuinely — like, a not-even-biased opinion — I was like, “Who’s the greatest actor that I can find for this music video?”,” she said. “And he was next to me in a chair. And he was so excited about it!”
In the video, Saltburn star Keoghan plays Carpenter’s criminal love interest; he gets arrested for robbing a woman at gunpoint, before Carpenter handcuffs him to a chair and tapes his mouth shut. “He likes the song, which is great,” says Carpenter. “He does like my music a lot, yeah.”
Of course, it probably helps that signing up your boyfriend to star in your music video saves a lot of long, boring phone emails and Zoom calls between agents —plus kissing them on camera has got to be way less awkward than making out with a stranger.
The couple have been dating since 2023, but prefer to keep their relationship on the downlow — which is why it was such a surprise when the ‘Please Please Please’ video was released in June of this year, and showed the world just how good they look together.
Although Carpenter has never given any juicy details of their relationship away, she has previously gushed about her man’s acting talents. “I don’t want to sound biased, but I think he’s one of the best actors of this generation,” she told Variety. “So getting to see him on the screen with my song as the soundtrack made the video better and all the more special.”
And in an interview with The Guardian in August, she said working together was “one of the best experiences I’ve ever had” too, adding “I’m very honored and I got to work with such a great actor” before mocking herself for being so coy about the whole thing.
“It’s not what I signed up for, but I can’t really help when I was born,” she said. “I want to be honest — I want to just write about what’s happening in my life as a 25 year old girl. But it comes with the territory and I just have to be like … okay!”
Whatever happens between Carpenter and Keoghan in the future, how cool will it be to have such a stylish video to look back on as a sexy souvenir of their relationship?
