Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco started dating in June 2023, six months before they went public in December. During that time, they hid their relationship from everyone, including all the guests at Taylor Swift’s party.
On Spotify’s Countdown To I Said I Love You First, the couple discussed attending Swift’s bash. “I don’t know if this was the first [party we went to], but it was actually really funny,” Gomez began. “As a couple, we went to Taylor’s party after some awards show. I don’t know, it was kind of cute. But I was mortified. Apparently cool people don’t show up to parties on time.”
I Said I Love You First by Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco
(That awards show was likely the MTV VMAs, which Gomez and Swift both attended in September 2023. They were both snapped at after-parties, with Gomez in a purple corset minidress.)
Blanco added more context, saying, “We’re the first people at every single party when I go with you. You like show up when my mother shows up to a party. No, I thought you were going to talk about the fact that nobody knew we were dating, and we were hiding the fact that we were dating so we like didn’t even like touch each other or really look at each other. ’Cause you were like, if a girl came up to me or something, you were like, ‘Hmm...’”
They went on to discuss their best date—and whether wearing disguises in public actually works for celebs.
Blanco said, “Definitely our best date ever—well, there’s a lot of things competing—I think our best date ever was when we were first dating, and we were still keeping it super secret. I remember I was like, ‘Let’s go to the Santa Monica Pier,’ and you were like, ‘We can’t go to the Santa Monica Pier.’ And I was like, ‘What if we dress up in disguises?’”
“Which usually never works,” Gomez interjected.
“No, but we did like full [disguises] because we were so scared of people finding out about us,” Blanco said. “I remember having so much fun being with you because we could just fully let go and not worry about anything else. And we rode the ferris wheel, we got corn dogs and cotton candy.”
“It was so cute,” Gomez said. “I’m not going to lie, sometimes the disguise thing is so stupid but in this case, it actually worked, which was crazy. I really didn’t care. I was so happy; I was in a state of ecstasy.”
Earlier this week, Blanco told Rolling Stone that they hid their relationship at first “because it’s a lot. I remember us having a conversation about whether we were going to keep dating or not. We just had to make sure, because she’s as big as it gets and it’s a big undertaking. It’s not like you date someone for a few weeks and then you’re like, ‘Oh, OK, bye.’ So we just took it slow. Then it started becoming such a hard thing, because it was like, ‘I don’t want to just have dinner inside with you and have all of our dates inside and we’re wearing a mask the entire date, and then we have to go hide in a car.’
“I was so sure that I was gonna marry her. I just knew,” he added. “It’s just a very different feeling. I know when Sel wakes up, she’s thinking in her head, ‘How can I make this day as good as I can for Benny?’ And I know I’m waking up and saying, ‘How can I make this day as good for Sel?’ We’re just thinking about each other.”
I Said I Love You First comes out tomorrow, March 21.
