Los Angeles
“I’m certainly not old enough to be alive when Adventures in Babysitting came out, but I’m definitely old enough to remember it,” Carpenter, 17, says during an interview in her Girl Meets World dressing room. “I saw it before I auditioned. And it was one of my mom’s favorite movies.”
Carpenter’s excited to be in Babysitting — the 100th original movie for the Disney Channel.
She plays Jenny, the perfect babysitter. Her reputation is on the line when a novice babysitter, Lola (Sofia Carson), uses Jenny’s name to land a job. Things go wrong quickly and that sets off a series of misadventures all over the town.
“There’s definitely the heart and soul that you saw in the original,” Carpenter says. “It’s really just a new classic take on the story by adding characters you fall in love with immediately.
The cast also includes Nikki Hahn, Max Gecowets, Jet Jurgensmeyer, Mallory James Mahoney and Madison Horcher.
The characters change through the course of the movie. Even the prim and proper Jenny ends up rapping her way through a musical number.
“They take the best of each other,” Carpenter says.
The movie is just the latest credit for Pennsylvania native Carpenter, who started acting when she was 11. That means she was too busy to have to take on babysitting jobs.
The mention of the job gets a grimace from Carpenter.
“Oh, no. There was no way I was going to do it whether I was an actress or not,” she says. “I don’t trust myself handling children. I love all the kids that guest star on the TV show and those in the movie because they are all so well-behaved. If they aren’t well-behaved, I don’t know what I would do.”
Back on the set, after a long day of rehearsals for Girl Meets World, Carpenter is ready to head home to spend the evening writing music. Can’t Blame A Girl For Trying was Carpenter’s debut single.
She says her passion for music came before her love of acting.
“It was music,” Carpenter says. “I had easy access to music because all you have to do is open your mouth and sing. Acting is one of those things where everything has to fall in place at the right time. Before that happened for me when I was 11, I would sing for people anywhere I could. I started making videos on YouTube. Somehow all of the puzzle pieces came together and now I’m doing a balancing act, which I love.”
If you miss tonight’s debut of Adventures in Babysitting on the Disney Channel, it will be available on DVD starting Tuesday.