Selener Getting Married
The Friday Post.
Something is in the air today … NeNe Leakes and Dorinda Medley and Taylor Swift all share a birthday?? Omg … More from Hung Up this week: The NPR Tiny Desk is Too Junky!!!!!!!! And a chat in the Substack App about Golden Globe noms.
“NOOOOOOOOO” a night owl texted me around 1 o’clock in the morning on Thursday. With one post on Instagram, timed perfectly to the right side of her every-27-days-social media break, Selena Gomez announced that she and Benny Blanco were engaged. “forever begins now..,” Gomez captioned the post. “hey wait… that’s my wife,” Blanco (real name Benjamin Joseph Levin) commented. There was a Taco Bell picnic involved.
Gomez and Blanco have been dating since June 2023, after they worked on the song “Single Soon,” a relationship exit interview put to music.1 When Selenators were skeptical of Blanco’s worthiness2 to date the woman behind “Love You Like A Love Song,” one of the greatest songs ever recorded, Gomez boxed with them in comments exchanged on Instagram. “He is my absolute everything in my heart,” she said. “Then why has he been the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” she asked another fan. “The end.” To two other fans: “Lol yeah and he’s still better than anyone I’ve ever been with. Facts.” and “I don’t understand. If you actually care about me. This is my happiest. If you don’t feel free to say whatever you want. But I will never allow your words to guide my life. Ever. I’m done. If you can’t accept me at my happiest then don’t be in y life at all.” A poet in every way … she logs on to log off.
Is Blanco3 the one? When he made the cut for People’s Sexiest Man Alive issue, it seemed like the equivalent of the big Meghan Markle Vanity Fair cover ahead of her engagement to Prince Harry, a public reintroduction, an Oh they’re really going for it. Blanco has only seemed fawning and supportive. “When I look at her,” he told Howard Stern in May, “I’m always just like, I don’t know a world where it could be better than this.” Unfortunately he showed up to that interview without shoes on.
Taylor Swift said she’d be flower girl. Selena Gomez’s IG post got over 20 million likes (including one from Hailey Bieber).
What the paid list got this week
More more more
Nothing has been more important to me this week than Line Sheet’s reporting on why everyone you follow on IG has been wearing Sezane. I just tested positive for adding and removing that trench — THE trench — from my cart a hundred times in a row. (Line Sheet)
I contributed a little blurb to GQ’s “best of culture” list this year … and yes it’s the decade-old Bravo show I’ve been watching (RHONY) … the best television I’ve seen all year. (GQ)
Wicked won Best Film and Best Director at the National Board of Review awards. (Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig won the lead actor awards.) (Deadline) Nickel Boys and Conclave made AFI’s top 10 list of the year (Kyle) last night I had to break the news to Andrew that Challengers is not getting nominated for Best Picture … he was shocked, lmao.
Highlights from Variety’s Actors on Actors pairings: Nicole Kidman and Zendaya (dropped today), Drew Starkey and Harris Dickinson, Colman Domingo and Kieran Culkin, Pamela Anderson and Mikey Madison. Ryan Reynolds sitting down to discuss what exactly … trying and failing to bully Martha Stewart? (Variety)
I have soooo many opinions about weddings, obviously, but a morning-after wedding event (as simple as just bagels and spreads) is a really nice pre-airport gesture when you’ve asked the majority of your guests to travel for your wedding! And more weddings should specify what colors the bridesmaids are wearing. A top 10 fear of mine is accidentally matching the bridesmaids of a wedding I’m not in. (The Cut)
Michelle Yeoh “had doubts about” playing Madam Morrible in Wicked… (Variety)
“A wretched experience I’ll cherish forever.” Loved John Waters’ year-end top 10 movies list. (Vulture)
It’s already been sold now, but you really have to see this Polish poster for Rosemary’s Baby… (Posteritati)
I wrote something small in The Metrograph, the film component of the movie theater of the same name.4
That’s all this week! Thank you for reading. Completely unrelated: are you following Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn’s daughters on IG? It seems like everyone is. (I won’t link.) Have a good weekend!
It was genuinely underrated and underappreciated … no one is a better pop star with less talent … I could go on …
Girl get up!!!!!
Yes, really, click that link.
I feel so weepy-full circle about this!!!! I moved to New York City right around the time Metrograph opened, and when I only had 4 friends in New York and no money, I’d go broke to treat myself to a screening and breakfast in the Commissary on Saturday or Sunday mornings.
That link was an act of violence. You know which one.
I had to take my glasses off after that link. That’s enough seeing for today.