Benny Blanco is used to cooking up some tasty hip-hop beats, but it seems Selena Gomez’s sweetheart is also a decent chef.
During the Monday, April 29, episode of SiriusXM’s “The Sporkful” podcast, Blanco, 36, explained how his cooking forged a friendship with SZA. “I remember the first time I was working with SZA in the recording studio,” Blanco told host Dan Pashman. “We were at my house and she went down to get a drink and she saw something in the fridge.”
Blanco, who worked on SZA’s 2022 record, SOS, continued: “She was like, ‘What’s that?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, it’s a little bit like banana pudding.’ And she was like, ‘Oh, can I have some?’ And she had one bite.”
One bite turned into several more, and by the end of the day, Blanco’s big sheet tray of pudding was empty. “[SZA] would just sneak down for bites,” explained Blanco. “And then every time she came to the studio, she needed banana pudding.”
SZA, 34, was not above singing for her supper, it seems. “Then it was like, ‘Oh, wait, what else do you make?’” said Blanc. “We wound up cooking more than making music, you know?”
Along with getting her collaborator to make her lasagna, SZA began to make deals with Blanco. “There was a time when SZA said, ‘I’m not coming over unless you have spicy rigatoni cooked for me.’ And she was halfway joking but halfway serious,” added Blanco. “And, ’cause I’ll bark demands at her, I’ll be like, ‘We need to get this vocal done!’ And she’s like, ‘We need to eat the spicy rigatoni!’ And [now] there’s always like a bartering system between us.”
Blanco built his relationship with SZA through tasty dishes, but how did he get Gomez, 31, to date him? Andrew Santino, host of the “Whiskey Ginger” podcast, asked just that earlier this month.
“I lost a lot of respect for her when I found out you were dating her because I’ve known you for years,” Santino, 40, told Blanco in a slightly joking manner on the Friday, April 26, episode. “She’s incredible. A great actor. A great performer. A great artist. Seems so humble. And then, I found out one day. I was in the shower, and my wife said, ‘Hey, Benny is dating Selena Gomez.’ And I turned the shower to cold all the way. And I sat there for about 30 minutes in a cold shower.”
Blanco joked that he “asks myself the same question every day,” joking that his “features are so grotesque that I popped out on the other side and now, I’m just like a hot guy.”
Gomez, who has been smitten with Blanco since striking up a romance with the producer last year, also has a sense of humor about her boyfriend’s appearance.
While shooting season 4 of Only Murders in the Building, she wore a red checkered button-down with black houndstooth pajama pants. She threw on a black duster and a pair of white slippers. “The day they dressed me like my boyfriend,” she teased via social media.
