New York, New York - Sabrina Carpenter got the last laugh as she hit back at her critics and showed off her acting chops during her Saturday Night Live hosting debut.
Saturday's episode saw the 26-year-old take on double duty as the host and musical guest to promote her latest album, Man's Best Friend.
During her monologue, Sabrina poked fun at the controversy surrounding the record's cover art and her overall provocative image.
"Everyone thinks of me as this, like, horndog pop star, but there's really so much more to me. I'm not just horny. I'm also turned on, and I'm sexually charged," she quipped. "And I love to read. My favorite book is the encyclopedia. It's so big and it's hard..."
She addressed the uproar over Man's Best Friend cover, which sees her on all fours as a man holds her by the hair, as she joked that the photo's editing is to blame
The Nonsense artist then showed an expanded version that saw SNL cast member Bowen Yang as the mystery man holding her hair.
"If you zoom out, it's clearly a picture from the [SNL] 50th anniversary special of Bowen helping me up by the hair... after Martin Short shoved me out of the buffet line," she said as the image enlarged further.
Elsewhere in the show, Sabrina performed two of her hit songs and participated in some fan-favorite sketches – including one that riffed on her pal Taylor Swift's new song.
Sabrina Carpenter performs Man's Best Friend hits on SNL
The episode's cold open welcomed the return of the viral "Domingo" sketch, which first began with a parody of Sabrina's hit Espresso when Ariana Grande hosted the show.
This time around, Sabrina and the SNL comedians riffed on The Fate of Ophelia by Taylor Swift and Abracadabra by Lady Gaga before Marcello Hernandez came in to spoof Ordinary by Alex Warren as Domingo himself.
As for her real musical performances, the Juno singer took the stage to play Man's Best Friend's lead single, Manchild, followed by the live debut of Nobody's Son.
Sabrina sang on a karate-inspired set for the latter, chopping some wood and throwing punches during the track's viral bridge.
The performance did feature something of a blunder, as Sabrina tripped the censors by singing the original expletive-laden lines, which were edited out of the West Coast broadcast and official social media clips.