Benny

Actor, singer and businesswoman Selena Gomez and music producer Benny Blanco were married Saturday in California, according to posts the couple shared on Instagram.

Gomez shared a series of dreamily filtered photos of the couple on a lawn in wedding attire — Gomez in a white halter-styled gown and Blanco in a classic black tuxedo, both reportedly designed by Ralph Lauren — while embracing and holding hands as Gomez gripped a simple bouquet of white flowers. The caption simply stated the date — “9.27.25” — flanked by white heart emojis and audio of “La Vie En Rose” overlaying the display. “My wife in real life,” read a comment from Blanco on the post. By Sunday morning, the post had already racked up more than 17 million likes, including from stars like Sabrina Carpenter and Sydney Sweeney. (It’s unclear if the photos were taken the day of the ceremony or earlier.)

On Sunday, Blanco shared his own commemorative post on Instagram with a caption that read: “i married a real life disney princess.” The series of photos included the couple, in their wedding attire, lounging on a white sofa and a close-up shot of their left hands with the wedding rings that now adorn them.

The couple’s weekend extravaganza was held in Santa Barbara, according to Vogue, with Taylor Swift and Gomez’s “Only Murders in the Building” cast mates Steve Martin and Martin Short among the guests reportedly in attendance. Meryl Streep, however, spent her weekend in Milan for Fashion Week, filming scenes for the sequel to “The Devil Wears Prada.” Earlier this month, Gomez said on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” that Short would be the ring bearer. (We’re still hoping that’s true.) Other stars said to be invited are Ed Sheeran and Gomez’s “Wizards of Waverly Place” co-star David Henrie.

The celebration comes nearly a year after Gomez, 33, and Blanco, 37, announced their engagement in December 2024. At the time of their engagement, Gomez shared the news on Instagram, captioning a series of photos of her ring with the words, “forever begins now.”

Gomez revealed in a cover story with Interview Magazine that she first met Blanco more than a decade ago, when she was about 16 or 17, to potentially collaborate on a song. (As a producer, Blanco has worked with numerous A-list pop stars, including Katy Perry, Sheeran, Kanye West and Maroon 5.)

But it wasn’t until years later that they finally worked together on the 2019 song “I Can’t Get Enough,” which also featured J Balvin and Tainy. In 2023, the couple confirmed their relationship and, that same year, worked together on her song “Single Soon.” Earlier this year, the couple released their first album together, titled “I Said I Love You First.”

SELENA Gomez has officially married Benny Blanco in a romantic ceremony with A-list guests.

The pair tied the knot in Santa Barbara, California, which The U.S. Sun exclusively learned would be the destination earlier this month.

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The couple confirmed their engagement in December 2024, with Selena flashing her gorgeous diamond ring on social media.

Benny, 37, popped the question after weeks of speculation that they were engaged, following Selena’s showcase of her new bling on the Emmys red carpet.

It happened over a year after the pair’s romance began in June 2023.

Fans knew the wedding was near when Selena, 33, posted photos on Instagram from her bachelorette bash in late August.

The Lose You to Love Me singer looked happy while donning a white bikini and a short veil during the beach getaway.

She’d already appeared to settle into her new life with the music producer, as the U.S. exclusively reported in March that the pair took out an over $20million mortgage on their $35million Beverly Hills mansion.

The lavish purchase came shortly before the duo released their first joint album, I Said I Love You First, which dropped on March 21.

It was initially thought that Selena and Benny’s wedding would be a ways away, after the songwriter, born Benjamin Joseph Levin, told Rolling Stone that they were taking their relationship “one day at a time.”

At the time, the Virginia native said they were enjoying their engagement and not rushing to the altar.

Benny also gushed about being “so sure” that he was going to marry Selena and how his feelings for her were “very different” from anything he’d ever experienced.

The multi-Grammy Award nominee previously dated model Elsie Hewitt before becoming romantically involved with Selena.

Meanwhile, Selena has had numerous high-profile relationships over the years, including Nick Jonas, Charlie Puth, Zedd, The Weeknd, and Justin Bieber.

The former Disney Channel star had the longest relationship with Justin, whom she dated on and off for eight years before splitting for good in March 2018.

Justin and Selena’s Relationship Timeline

Here is what you need to know about Justin and Selena’s on and off again relationship throughout the 2010s.

December 8, 2010: Justin and Selena were spotted on an IHOP date in Philadelphia together, although Selena tried to shut down romance rumors saying they are just friends.

December 31, 2010: The pair spend New Year’s together in St. Lucia and were spotted kissing on a yacht.

February 28, 2011: Justin and Selena make their red-carpet debut at the Vanity Fair Oscars party. 

May 2, 2011: Selena confirms their relationship to Seventeen.

November 2012: Justin and Selena break up for the first time due to “being apart so much” and “trust issues,” a source told PEOPLE at the time. 

April 2013: The pair were spotted together again, engaging in PDA. 

November 6, 2014: Selena confirms she and Justin split for the second time while On Air with Ryan Seacrest.

December 2014: Justin sparks romance rumors with Hailey Baldwin and is seen kissing her a year later on December 31, 2015, while in St. Barts. 

August 2016: Justin begins dating Sofia Richie.

January 2017: Selena starts dating The Weeknd.

November 30, 2017: Selena splits from The Weeknd and reunites with Justin.

March 7, 2018: The pair take a break and Justin rekindles his relationship with Hailey soon after.

May 2018: Selena decided to walk away from the relationship.

At the time, a source told Us Weekly: “Selena started seeing the bigger picture when it came to their relationship, like what was more important: her general happiness and her family and friends’ approval, or her being together with Justin, where no one really supported their relationship.”

A year earlier, the Sonny with a Chance alum told Miami’s Power 96.5 FM, “I’m the kind of girl that loves tremendously big. I just have always been that girl.”

“I will give my heart and my soul to the person that I love. It’s just how I operate.”

Benny has spoken about how he supports Selena and gained her trust following her past heartbreaks.

“I’m aware of her strengths and I’m aware of her weakness, and so what I’ve tried to do is surround her with things that help,” Benny said during the couple’s joint appearance on Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast earlier this year.

He also admitted to nearly self-sabotaging their relationship in the beginning, saying, “I feel like it all happens for a reason. I feel like maybe me doing that is what disarmed her enough.”

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In “Overcompensating,” Prime Video’s newly released comedy series, everyone is doing too much. That’s what Benito Skinner, the creator and star of the A24-produced show, experienced in college in the mid-2010s, and why it felt like a perfect backdrop to tell a heightened version of his own coming out story.

“Overcompensating” centers around Benny (played by Skinner), a closeted former high school football player turned college frat bro who spends too much energy posing as a straight guy by lowering his voice and keeping his love for Lorde’s songwriting in check. That’s the case even, or especially, when he’s greeted by “The Alliance of Gay People and Lesbians and Bisexual People and Asexuals too even” as he makes his way around campus.

But Skinner knew there was plenty of narrative potential in focusing on the thorny relationship Benny strikes up with Carmen, a girl who ends up being both his beard and his BFF. Only in this telling, Carmen, played by Wally Baram, isn’t just a supporting player in Benny’s path toward self-acceptance.

“Naturally that story and getting to college, it’s this coming of age thing,” Skinner says. “And for so many gay people, it’s meeting these girlfriends who are creating these safe spaces — all the while they have their own s— going on. What was so interesting to me is thinking how I’m going through this whole journey inside. But so is she. She is having this whole other experience too.”

Benny (Benito Skinner) and Carmen (Wally Baram) in “Overcompensating.”

(Sabrina Lantos / Prime Video)

Baram says when she read the show’s pilot episode, she instantly understood where the character was coming from.

“I got the script, and within the first three pages, there’s this character — this frizzy, curly haired girl who’s kind of awkward and just can’t do the same thing that everyone else is doing,” Baram recalls. “And who, over the course of the script, is overcompensating with love. That was just so me for a really large chunk of my life, frankly.”

After meeting at orientation — and bonding over the need to ignore the kid who insists on telling everyone he’s Amanda Knox’s cousin — Benny and Carmen fumble through a performed kind of meet-cute. Wishing to do away with his sexual urges for cute boys on campus and hoping to avoid becoming a campus pariah if he doesn’t sleep with a girl on his first day at school, Benny pursues Carmen.

Over the course of the eight-episode season of “Overcompensating,” their freshman situationship quickly gets more and more complicated. Carmen is clueless at first about why things aren’t clicking with Benny in the bedroom (or more like the dorm room). And the root of the issue can be difficult for her to discern.

“It’s like, how could you not know he was gay? But in these relationships I’ve had with women, there was so much confusion and miscommunication through sad dishonesty,” he says. “The Carmen character was so fun to write because this girl is experiencing this on the other side being like, ‘What the f— is wrong with this guy?’ I found that for women, gay was the last thing on their list of things why these relationships weren’t working. And I’m like, ‘No, babe, that’s No. 1.’ You did nothing wrong.”

Benito Skinner on writing the relationship between his character and Carmen: “I found that for women, gay was the last thing on their list of things why these relationships weren’t working. And I’m like, ‘No, babe, that’s No. 1.’ You did nothing wrong.”

(Dutch Doscher / For The Times)

Finding the right actress to nail Carmen’s charming awkwardness was a challenge. Like Benny, Carmen is trying to start anew and fit in at the fictional Yates University. She’s often pushing herself to perform whatever normalcy looks like for a college freshman.

Carmen doesn’t nail collegespeak — “Here’s to a night we’ll never remember with the friends we’ll never forgive,” she captions her first selfie with Benny — but she’s skilled at beer pong, first-person shooters and chugging drinks like the frat boys on campus. More importantly, she is sweet and attentive, the kind of tender girlfriend a closeted boy like Benny would naturally gravitate toward.

At the suggestion of A24 producer Alli Reich, Skinner watched Baram’s 2021 set on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” There, the young comedian, who’s Mexican and Syrian (“or as Fox News would call me, a ‘very lazy terrorist,’” she joked), poked fun at how she’s struggling with adulthood, especially since her body felt both childlike and grown-up at the same time. “I’m 5’2”, I have a baby face, but I’ve [got] boobs and the voice of like an eighth grade Jewish boy,” she deadpanned in the set.

“I had sat with this character for four and a half, five years,” Skinner recalls. “And I watched this video, and it was this very surreal moment. She was exactly what I had in my head for Carmen. I was like, ‘OK, well, it’s her.’”

Baram’s winsome self-deprecation felt like a perfect match for the cast of this off-kilter comedy Skinner was assembling.

“When we met in person, I felt like I had little maracas out,” Baram jokes. “The energy in that room was just like, ‘Oh, hello!’ Like when two dogs meet, and their tails go up.”

“It was so two chihuahuas meet, finally,” Skinner adds.

“When we met in person, I felt like I had little maracas out,” Wally Baram says about Benito Skinner.

(Dutch Doscher / For The Times)

“Overcompensating” hinges on their crackling chemistry. But as the season unfolds, the series becomes more and more of an ensemble piece. As Benny navigates his first semester at Yates, we spend more time with his sullen sister, Grace (Mary Beth Barone); her douchey frat boyfriend, Peter (Adam DiMarco); Benny’s swoon-worthy crush, Miles (Rish Shah) and Carmen’s brassy, sassy roommate Hailee (Holmes).

Together, they create a vision of college life that will make millennials cringe in recognition. The pilot, after all, opens with Britney Spears’ “Lucky” and the foundational queer film “George of the Jungle,” starring a chiseled, loin-clothed Brendan Fraser. But it’s the needle drops throughout the show that best capture that generation and moment in time. Charli XCX may get the spotlight treatment — she guest stars as herself in Episode 4 — but the deployment of a My Chemical Romance song in a later episode made the cast realize just how wounding and specific the writing on the show could be.

“I read ‘Welcome to the Black Parade’ and it sent a chill down my spine because I thought that was private to me, alone in my room,” Baram says. “And then you put it in there and I was like, ‘OK, so we all had that moment,’ which is both good and also, wow, my plight is not special.”

“That is so true that it felt private to all of us,” Skinner adds. “Because that was also something with Mary Beth, too. When we were talking about that song, she’s like, ‘I feel this in my bones, maybe in a good and a really mortifying way.’ I hope it has a resurgence. I do think Gen Z will really enjoy that song. It feels very them.”

Barone’s cringey karaoke rendition of that emo 2006 banger resonates because it captures the joy (and embarrassment) that comes from being unabashedly oneself — something every character in “Overcompensating” grapples with to varying degrees of success.

“Overcompensating” hinges on the chemistry between Wally Baram and Benito Skinner.

(Dutch Doscher / For The Times)

Skinner’s comedy excels at capturing those crippling feelings of inadequacy — whether you’re a closeted dude rushing a frat, a secretly emo girl trying to please her boyfriend or a shy freshman figuring out who she could be away from home.

“Some of these people that come into college where they’re like, ‘I’m gonna do me no matter what, and I’m coming in here like a bat out of hell’ — I felt so in awe watching them,” Skinner says. “I was like, ‘This is so incredible that you can do this.’ Meanwhile I feel so confident in one room and in the next room I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I should not be here.’”

That’s precisely what Baram keyed into when bringing Carmen to life, as well as listening to “Truth Hurts” by Lizzo to get into character.

“Because it reminds me of a time in my life in which I thought I was conquering the social. I was going to a party, and I thought that I was gonna, you know, get down and dirty,” she says. “But really, I was a disingenuous version of myself, and ultimately ended up feeling unrewarded at the end, no matter what I did, whether I had a successful social interaction or I failed miserably.”

“Overcompensating” broadens concepts that are central to the queer experience — like the closet and found families — and places them at the heart of the modern college experience. And, in between jokes about pink eye, Grindr dates gone wrong and a pitch perfect takedown of college improv, the series makes a heartfelt case for how to make the best out of those formative years.

“To do it right, I think, is the Benny and Carmen way,” Skinner says. “It’s finding the person that doesn’t make you feel like you have to be so inconsistent with who you are and the things you actually want to do. For me it’s like, you’re bad at overcompensating when you’re with the right person.”