Sabrina Carpenter Makes Dating Disaster Joke After Barry Keoghan Split

Sabrina Carpenter

isn’t buying into any old adages following her recent split from Barry Keoghan.

Carpenter, 25, surprised fans at Jack Antonoff’s annual The Ally Coalition talent show event at the NYU Skirball Theatre on Tuesday, December 17, where Us Weekly was in attendance. She rocked a black two-piece capri pant set that featured bows and paired the look with black high heels.

The pop star joined the Bleachers frontman on stage to perform their song “Slim Pickins.” Antonoff produced the track for Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet album.

Before they performed the track, Carpenter shared that she and Antonoff were inspired by the idiom there’s “plenty of fish in the sea.” However, Carpenter joked that she’s not feeling as hopeful these days. She told the crowd that the old saying is a “big fat lie, I think.” She added that while her opinion might be unsavory she teased the song has a more “pessimistic” outlook.

Carpenter’s comments come weeks after Us confirmed that she and Keoghan, 32, called it quits after nearly one year of dating.

“It’s been challenging for their relationship since she started going on tour and has been gone a lot,” a source exclusively told Us at the time. “Their schedules were not aligning. All the time spent apart it was hard to maintain a relationship amid her career exploding.”

After news broke of their split, Keoghan deleted his social media page and asked fans to “please be respectful.”

“I can only sit and take so much. My name has been dragged across the internet in ways I usually don’t respond to,” he wrote in an X statement earlier this month. “I have to respond now because it’s getting to a place where too many lines are being crossed. I deactivated my account because I can no longer let this stuff distract me from my family and my work.”

It’s been a whirlwind year for Carpenter. She had a major breakout by dropping her Short ’N’ Sweet album, completing with the U.S. leg of her Short ’N’ Sweet tour, releasing her Nonsense Christmas special on Netflix and becoming a first-time Grammy nominee. Keoghan, for his part, has been busy as well with his various film projects including Peaky Blinders, Bird and more.

Keoghan and Carpenter met during a Paris Fashion Week event in fall 2023 and started dating the following January. After the actor was spotted at several of Carpenter’s concerts, they made their red carpet debut at the Met Gala in May. The pair also teamed up for the singer’s “Please Please Please” music video where Keoghan made a cameo as Carpenter’s love interest.

“Please Please Please” has become one of Carpenter’s biggest songs and earned several nods at the Grammys. During the Tuesday concert, Carpenter and Antonoff performed a “Christmas version” of “Please Please Please” while she sat on the music producer’s piano. The crowd cheered as she sang the chorus. Sabrina joked that this performance was her “last singing day of the year.”

With reporting by Lexi Carson