‘Please Please Please’ Music Video Director Bardia Zeinali Gets What a Sabrina Carpenter Song Needs
Director Bardia Zeinali knew exactly what the music video for Sabrina Carpenter‘s “Please Please Please” needed. For a song in which a woman pleads with her chaotic partner to behave (or, to quote the song’s best lyric, “Don’t embarrass me, motherfucker”), the music video demanded sexy crime vibes. There’s a reason Zeinali put Sharon Stone in “Basic Instinct” on the mood board.
The resulting video for Carpenter’s second single off her upcoming “Short ‘n’ Sweet” album, in which Carpenter meets Barry Keoghan’s smirking ne’er-do-well, is instantly iconic, with director of photography Sean Price Williams’ lush visuals bringing to mind Douglas Sirk doing neo-noir. But beyond turning Oscar nominee Keoghan into the internet’s latest boyfriend (something even “Saltburn” didn’t achieve) and creating the summer’s go-to meme (“That’s always the goal,” he joked), Zeinali gave the video something even more vital: a total understanding and appreciation of the sly humor in Carpenter’s songwriting.
“She has a bit of that wink always,” Zeinali told IndieWire. “She’s really funny herself. So a lot of [the script] just wrote itself in a really natural and organic way. Even with my editor, when we were working, he was like, ‘I love the dolly shot where we pan from her to Barry.’ She’s singing to the camera, and we land on him, and he was like, ‘I love it because the comedy is so right.'”
That moment became a meme almost as soon as the video premiered. “I know you’re craving some fresh air, but the ceiling fan is so nice,” Carpenter chirps as the camera slowly pans back to reveal Keoghan aiming a gun at a bank teller. The visual joke lands perfectly in sync with Carpenter’s lyric, the kind of poppy nonsense that distinguished her hit “Espresso” as something wholly unlike other contemporary pop music.
“I always knew the first chorus was the first time I wanted to break the fourth wall, have her performing direct into camera,” Zeinali said. “[That’s when] you first kind of hear what she’s saying, which is just basically like pleading to this person to stop their chaotic ways. I knew that I wanted to have that shift there because there’s a shift in the music, the musicality.”
The sequences that precede the chorus find Carpenter and Keoghan meeting cute (with her singing to him through the glass during visitor day at the jail) and then walking hand in hand into a pizza parlor. But things take a turn as Keoghan leads her into the back, to the deep freeze. As Carpenter’s face sinks and the chorus kicks in, the camera cuts to a shot of her lounging in the doorway, singing to the viewer while Keoghan fights a group of much larger men in slo-mo behind her. The moment is as gorgeous as it is funny.
“Originally the brief was that it’s Sabrina getting caught up with this person who continues to get into trouble,” Zeinali said. “I knew that I wanted to do a fight sequence. But I wanted that sequence to feel like a painting, this tableau moment where she’s almost like a Renaissance painting.” After rejecting a few other ideas, like using a scrim to show the fight happening in silhouette, Zeinali decided to keep the sequence grounded but heightened. “So where we landed was basically she would be in this door frame, the frame being the separation between the two worlds, and she’s kind of caught in between. She’s kind of there, but kind of not. She’s disassociated a little bit, both in terms of where she’s at with the relationship, but also her kind of turning a blind eye.”
Zeinali filmed “Please Please Please” in a single day in a decommissioned jail on Staten Island, but Keoghan suggested he prep the fight the day before to ensure the one-take scene went smoothly during filming. “He was really aware that it’s Sabrina’s video, it’s Sabrina’s day, he didn’t want to be the one that’s holding up a shot or taking too much time or space,” Zeinali said.
That extended to his wardrobe, too. Keoghan weighed in on the actual clothes, but Zeinali’s vision was always that his look remained the same to symbolize his stasis, while Carpenter’s looks evolved from cosplaying at film noir to a more innocent, schoolgirl look to the final kiss-off dress that is simultaneously far removed from Sharon Stone’s all-white “Basic Instinct” ensemble and brings it instantly to mind.
“I worked pretty closely with her stylist,” Zeinali said. “I like to come with a really strong POV for costume and wardrobe always. With this in particular, I knew that I wanted Sabrina to have one thing in her wardrobe that was constant throughout that felt almost like a hyper fixation so that I can feel like this person is kind of obsessive and fixates on things. And where we landed were these kind of stirrup thigh-high socks that she’s wearing throughout.”
As the song ends, Carpenter abandons her chaotic man with a literal kiss-off (albeit on his duct-taped mouth). The camera holds on Keoghan’s face, the credits roll, and music starts to play. But, with apologies to Carpenter conspiracy theorists, that music is not a tease of her next single. “That’s the stems from [‘Please Please Please’],” Zeinali said. “It’s the guitar riff. That was actually Sabrina’s suggestion. She came in for an edit session where we were talking about the outro. I love to do credits, but we were trying to figure out, visually, what’s the picture for the credits. Let’s not just do it on black. Then we were playing around with [footage of Keoghan], and Sabrina had the idea of that guitar riff coming in. And it works great because the song ends in this big way with all these harmonies, and then this guitar comes in and it feels very much like the credits. You want to feel the lights coming on, and it’s giving you permission to move on with your life but keep you entertained and engaged.”
