Sabrina Carpenter‘s “Taste” music video was already cinematic and jaw-dropping, and apparently, its storyline even extends to its props, with one of its most memorable ones having a Sabrina-inspired name.
Jenna Ortega, who starred opposite of Carpenter in the bloody, campy 2024 video, recently revealed a behind-the-scenes detail about the chainsaw she wielded near the end of the video. According to the actress, the prop had a name that referenced Carpenter, although she couldn’t quite recall the exact name.
“I think the chainsaw had some crazy name and reference to Sabrina as well. It was called like the Espresso 3000 or something,” Ortega told Esquire.
The name would be a fitting nod to Carpenter’s hit “Espresso,” which kicked off the pop star’s blockbuster Short n’ Sweet era in the spring of 2024. The chainsaw itself gets interesting screen time in the “Taste” video, which sees Ortega and Carpenter repeatedly trying to kill each other in increasingly elaborate fashion. Ortega said the chainsaw sequence was her favorite part to film, calling it “really camp and fun” and noting that the pair had “nice little outfits” for the scene.
Despite how elaborate the finished video looks, Ortega said there wasn’t actually much time to prepare for the shoot. She revealed that she found out she would be involved only days beforehand and said much of the action wasn’t choreographed in advance.
“Nothing about that music video was choreographed,” Ortega said. “Like we were just running around. We had no time to prep or really talk about it.”
“Taste,” released as the third single from Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet, became one of the album’s biggest hits, reaching No. 2 on the Hot 100 and spending multiple weeks in the chart’s top 10. Meanwhile, the accompanying video helped establish the song’s darkly comic visual identity, with Carpenter and Ortega battling through a series of increasingly gruesome encounters.
Watch the full interview with Ortega below.
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