Benny Blanco just added “Hot Ones Support Coach” to the running list of roles he plays for Selena Gomez, right beside fiancé, personal chef, and stay-at-home producer. The singer still has war flashbacks to her surprise Hot Ones experience on The Tonight Show in 2019, but having him by her side for her first official appearance on the viral show made all the difference.
The couple that suffers through Da’Bomb Beyond Insanity together stays together. During a lightning round of questions, the spice level kicked up to a point that took both Blanco and Gomez down. When he read off one prompt asking what she thinks his most underrated song is, she took a lap around the table and landed on: “I don’t know what song you would have done.” When host Sean Evans prompts Blanco to pick another, he forgot how to read for a second: “It’s crazy, you lose motor skills.”
Blanco and Gomez fell into an easier rhythm with each other while making their collaborative album I Said I Love You First, out March 28. “I was able to tell him things that I don’t think I would in another relationship, because he was also to me like the conductor of this record,” Gomez said. “I felt like I could tell him things that maybe I was feeling insecure about that I wouldn’t feel like I could open up to any other producer that way — let alone a partner.”
Gomez got Blanco to open up, too, but in a different way: she introduced him to the world of Taylor Swift. “Before we started dating obviously, I was aware of Taylor Swift’s music, but I wasn’t a true Swiftie until I was with her,” he said. “Now I’ll be like, put that song on. How’s that one go again? We’re in the car and I’m like, wow I’m just like singing Taylor Swift songs from like 10 years ago and I feel free.”
The couple joked that Gomez tends to gravitate towards Blanco during considerably less free, low-stakes moments. “When you’re always doing something dangerous with a knife, I always try to hug you in the most terrible moment,” Gomez said, with Blanco confirming: “Whenever it’s the most dangerous thing in the kitchen. I’ll be frying an entire lobster and she comes up and tickles me.”
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She added that she doesn’t do it on purpose, it just happens that way. Her lunch schedule while filming Only Murders in the Building feel into a similar rhythm. “They eat the same thing every day,” she said of her co-stars Martin Short and Steve Martin. “And now I eat the same thing every day. So, it’s either a tuna sandwich with Dijon mustard or sushi. And now all I eat is a chicken salad sandwich. And for some reason I’m excited to get my meal next to theirs.”
Having these consistent and fairly predictable moments makes the unexpected ones sweeter, too. Reflecting on the surprising success of her first Number One single “Lose You to Love Me,” Gomez said,
“I thought the song was gonna be hopefully relatable and beautiful and honest but I did not expect it to do what it did. It was much bigger than me. It ended up being a song for people that felt the way that I felt and maybe turned it into another version of a song that suited them. It was really powerful to me and I think that’s something I’ll always remember.”
