The producer who is dating Selena Gomez is featured in the magazine’s anticipated sexiest issue with tips on epic first dates and cooking.
Benny Blanco visits SiriusXM’s ‘The Howard Stern Show’ at SiriusXM Studios on May 14, 2024 in Los Angeles.
Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for SiriusXM
By now you’ve likely seen or heard about Benny Blanco‘s skills in the kitchen. The Grammy-nominated producer who’s been dating Selena Gomez for the past year offered up some of his top tips for being a good boyfriend in a preview of People magazine’s annual Sexiest Man Alive issue.
Blanco, 36, who the magazine said will be included in the upcoming annual countdown of hunks, shared what he called his eight secrets to success in love and life, stressing that you should never play “games,” and that you should always bring your A-game for every outing.
“I [still] go all out for every date. It doesn’t mean spending your entire bank account. It means being attentive and listening,” said Blanco, who has been pictured courtside at Lakers games cuddling with Gomez and going all out for their first Valentine’s Day together, where he brought an air fryer to a rented out movie theater so he could provide the singer with her favorite snacks.
The producer offered the magazine a series of eight simple tips for being a sexy gent. They include:
- Learning how to cook – “Even if you’re terrible at cooking, [your partner will] like it because you did it. Ask your partner what they want to eat. Don’t try to cook them what you want to eat. If you don’t know how to cook it — learn it,” said Blanco, who dropped his Open Wide: A Cookbook for Friends cookbook earlier this year. Also, if you can’t cook, he said you can always order Postmates and pretend you whipped it up yourself. Bonus tip: “Try to be chivalrous: Tell her how pretty she is. Chivalry’s not dead.”
- Make the first date an experience: The take-away you want is your partner saying, “‘Oh my God, I’m calling all my friends. This was the craziest thing. We were on the back of a tractor trailer flying and he had me spinning out the…’ It’s got to be something insane because you want to leave an impression. The person’s going to be going out on a bunch of first dates, and you got to secure your spot,” he said. He noted that one time Selena rented out a botanical garden for them and recalled making movie theater nachos for Gomez for Valentine’s Day and deep frying her favorite pickles from Texas for her.
- Dress for success: It’s not about wearing the most expensive thing, it’s about the perfect mix of high-low, like a vintage Prada jacket with a killer thrift store find.
- Self-care counts: Good skin, not showering every day and a signature scent (tobacco and cotton candy) that makes you smell a “little bit like a man [and] a little bit feminine.”
- Be a great host: Blanco said he loves to host dinner parties and often invites people who don’t know each other, or even shouldn’t hang together to make things interesting. “I want someone who writes songs sitting next to an 80-year-old florist,” he told the magazine. “I think age is nothing but a number. I want a 3 year old sitting next to a scientist and just hear what they’re talking about because I know it’s going to be some crazy s–t.”
- Moms matter: Blanco’s best friend is his mom, who he goes to the farmer’s market with every Sunday. He also cooks her lunch, gets her a new orchid every Mother’s Day and they go swimming and gossip together.
- Turn gift-giving into high art: Never get the thing that everyone else is buying by remembering something a friend said and using that memory to get them a gift they actually want. To make things sexier, Blanco also noted that most of his gifts are homemade. Gomez gets it. The first time he and Gomez realized they were going to be together, she made him a bear that said “I miss you so much. You’re going to be okay. I’ll see you when I get back,” when its hand was pressed.
- No ghosting: Blanco has never completely blanked anyone — “you have to be demonic to fully ghost someone” — because he thinks that a gentleman would never do that. “I completely understand if you go out on a date and the guy’s being totally creepy — you should totally ghost the f–k out of him,” he said. “But I don’t want to ghost anyone. I always think whenever I’m doing anything like that, I’ll think about my mom and I’ll say like, ‘Oh, I want to treat this person like I would treat my mom and how I’d want someone to treat my mom.’”
The Late Show host Stephen Colbert will announced this year’s Sexiest Man Alive cover star on Tuesday night (Nov. 12).
