Might Gwyneth Paltrow have been right all along? While Goop, her $252-million lifestyle empire, has ended up on the wrong end of a gazillion jokes about the insane shit on which bored, pampered, rich women will spend money — jade eggs? Spirulina popcorn? Candles that smell like her vagina? — much of the tactics and tweaks and healing hacks Paltrow endorsed to haute ridicule a few years ago are now absolutely part of the mainstream. Think about it: Gwyneth was plugging intermittent fasting, refined sugar evasion, a good gut microbiome and reducing inflammation years before Tim Spector, the professor of genetic epidemiology who has us all signed up to his Zoe program, slapping glucose monitors on our upper arms and fermenting our own kimchi. Why is it OK if Spector says it but laughable if Paltrow does? Why?
Heaven knows, my own wellness endeavors are heavily Paltrow-influenced. For starters: was “wellness” even a thing before Goop? And now? I train (Gwyneth trains), I dry brush (Gwyneth dry brushes), I’m obsessed by my gut (Gwyneth is … oh, you’ve got this now), I moderate my anxiety with conscious breathing, I tend to my pelvic floor, at the beginning of this year I ditched refined sugars, and what else? Oh yeah — I meditate too, have done since Covid’s lockdown madness, which is when Paltrow took it up.
“I’d tried before,” she tells me over Zoom, “but I did not get it. I first learned T M [Transcendental Meditation, during which you repeat a precious phrase you have been given — a mantra — over and over for 20 minutes] I wanna say ten years ago? I had a great teacher and it was really appealing to me, but I just couldn’t quite … I think I was at a more difficult stage in my life. I had a lot running through my head and my body and my nervous system couldn’t get the consistency. Then my husband, Brad [Falchuk, the TV writer, director and producer of American Horror Story], during Covid he said, ‘I’d really love to learn how to do that.’ So we went back to my original meditation teacher and he taught Brad, and then Brad and I started doing it together every morning.”
Did you have a moment when you finally got it?
“In fact, that was when I first started learning, ten years ago. I went really, really deep, and it was like I was up in the stratosphere or something.”
Did you see God?
“Ha. Uh … I felt connected to something way outside my body and ego. I felt … you know when people talk about, like, the oneness they experience? I definitely experienced that.”
Why is it OK if Spector says it but laughable if Paltrow does? Why?
During Covid, T M became part of Paltrow’s daily regimen (a complex and exhaustive business that also involves oil pulling and an infrared sauna and a load of other stuff I’d probably mock if I weren’t already doing some of it). And now she has teamed up with a meditation app to do … what exactly? I’ve already downloaded Moments of Space, the app in question, and discovered I have a choice of voices for the guided meditations. At the moment they’re Alisha and Stefan, but by the time this interview comes out there will be Gwyneth too — eventually she will be the only voice.
Have you been practicing your meditation voice?
“No, no, no, no. No, I have not.”
You must!
“You think so?” She lowers her voice. “Like this? And get more relaxed in my tone? I think my voice can sound quite urgent. I have to get into my more relaxed voice.”
So how else is she involved? Moments of Space was originally founded by the software developer Kim Little and Julian Murphy, a former manager at Apple, in 2022, but with its new partnership with Goop it looks set to rival the likes of Headspace and Calm.
“I’m advising on everything, from product to … What I’m good at is sort of understanding, both for this business and my own business, like, what consumers need, where they’re going, what they want, how to reach them, how to make resonant content and messaging.”
If Goop’s anything to go by, you are exceptionally good at that, I say.
“Mmmmm.”
Paltrow smooths her hands through her hair, which is long and blonde and loose, exactly as you’ve seen it in films and in Insta posts and on red carpets. She’s Zooming from Los Angeles, backlit by sunlight, white shirt, no makeup, heavy black-framed glasses. I’m fluctuating, as I always do in such circs, between utter amazement that someone so unbelievably famous is (sort of) in my flat right now — and that sweet, soothing realization that they, like literally everyone, are just another person at the end of the day.
Paltrow, meanwhile, is contemplating the scope of her own business instinct. “I wouldn’t call myself exceptional, but I do think I have a bit of a sixth sense about where culture is going. I tend to be able to identify things a little bit ahead of the curve.”
She wanted to work with Moments of Space, she tells me, because she liked the “eyes open” aspect of its approach. As a longish-term practitioner of your bog-standard, eyes-shut, sitting down in a quiet room-style meditation, I initially thought this sounded like an empty gimmick. Actually, having since tried it a couple of times, it turns out it’s a decent response to the fact that a lot of people find it either impossible to chisel out 20 minutes of alone time to practice more conventional meditation or are too angsty, itchy and easily distracted to be able to sit it out — because you can walk around while you do this.
I ask about her involved morning regime, assuming I’ll marvel over/mock the intricate complexities of it, but Paltrow is nothing if not surprising. Is your morning regimen an evolving feast of alternative therapies and cutting-edge woo-woo, I ask, leadingly.
“No. You know, it’ll be interesting to see … In the fall Brad and I have boys that will be going off to university.” Moses, Paltrow’s youngest child with her ex-husband, Chris Martin, will be leaving home for college this autumn, as will Brody Falchuk, Brad’s youngest child. “It’ll be interesting to see how the morning routine changes with no kids in the house.”
How do you feel about them going? “On the one hand incredible sadness. A deep sense of impending grief.” She looks truly devastated at the idea. “On the other hand this is exactly what should be happening. Your kids are supposed to be, you know, young adults who can achieve and cope and make connections and be resilient. That’s exactly what you want. And that means they leave the house.”
So it’s complicated? “Yeah. I’ve been so defined and so fulfilled by motherhood. It’s been kind of the central … it’s been like the central kind of … I don’t know even how to articulate it! It’s like the guiding force. It’s what I return to. I observe a lot of my friends who’ve had kids who’ve gone off to college. Your kid … it changes. And, you know, they come home a lot and all that stuff, but it’s not quite the same as living under the same roof all the days of the year. So I’m just trying to be open to what that means.”
Do you anticipate a shift in identity? “I’ll let you know. I was talking about this with a friend of mine the other day. As a woman I think we have these very distinct chapters, and you have no idea what these life changes are going to feel like until they happen, right? You don’t know what it feels like to be married until you’re married. You don’t know what it feels like to lose a parent until you lose a parent. It’s like you get a whole new lexicon of feelings and I don’t know what it’s going to be, but I’m going to try to stay really open, try to find, I don’t know, the silver linings.
“I wouldn’t call myself exceptional, but I do think I have a bit of a sixth sense about where culture is going.”
Spontaneity! I never really go anywhere or do anything because I want to be around my kids while they live at home. You know, it’s like, ‘Oh, we’re doing a girls’ weekend here and there,’ and I’m like, ‘F*** no, I have 88 days left of Moses living [with me]’, you know? It’s been basically 20 years of me being beholden to a school calendar — so what will that feel like, to not have that? I don’t know. It’s sort of exciting, in a way, if you let it be. Maybe?”
I think so, I say. And those changes — in my experience — they always smuggle in some good things along with the sad. “I think they can. And … I think it was the poet Adrienne Rich who said, ‘Change is the only poem’. I love that quote so much.”
Later I look it up. The full quote is: “The moment of change is the only poem. The changes we dread most may contain our salvation.” Which is apposite, given it was one of those rough, enforced, desperately sad changes that first piqued Paltrow’s interest in wellness. Her father, the director Bruce Paltrow, was diagnosed with oral cancer in 1999, when Paltrow was 27. “It was his cancer diagnosis that got me on this whole path,” she tells me.
Before that were you a McDonald’s for breakfast type of girl? “I was more like a Camel Lights and Diet Coke kind of girl.”
Which works to a point. “It worked for me, for a long time!”
And then Bruce got sick? “Yeah. And, you know, he was so compromised by the therapies, the treatments. From all the radiation his throat was completely burned. He had a feeding tube for a while. And I was helping him eat at one time, pushing a syringe of canned food, you know, ‘food’ — canned liquid stuff — into his stomach and I had this very visceral moment of, what am I putting directly into his stomach? And I looked at the can — I had never thought about this stuff at all — but I looked at the can and it was the longest list of chemicals, different things I couldn’t pronounce.
And I was, like, is this good for him? And that put me down this whole crazy path of examining everything from nutrition, environmental toxins, gut health, all this stuff that nobody was really thinking about. What sugar does to cancer, how glycemic spikes impact everything, inflammation, blah, blah, blah. I started buying books. I mean, this is pre-Internet or very early Internet. I was doing a ton of research, and it was very fringe at the time. People talking about eating healthier for positive health outcomes, examining if gluten was a potential allergen, is sugar not good for you? All these things were considered really fringe. I asked him, ‘Would you consider trying some of these things?’”
So that was your goal? To help your father? “To help him! I said, ‘Could we try to cut sugar, alcohol, dairy and gluten out of your diet?’ He’s like, ‘I’d rather die!’” She smiles, seeming genuinely — and fondly — amused by the memory.
Does she think her father would have lived longer if he had followed her advice? “Oh, I have no idea. I mean, there’s really no way to know. But I think when you’re in grief like that you want to do everything you can.”
“I was more like a Camel Lights and Diet Coke kind of girl.”
Bruce died in 2002, aged 58. Paltrow is now 51 — just seven years younger. I ask if this weighs on her. “Not really. I have a very good friend whose mum died of breast cancer when she was little. Actually, I have a number of friends that … There’s just an incredible fear around getting to their mother’s age [when she died], or past their mother’s age. I think in my father’s case, I mean, his illness changed my life and the way I treat my body to such an extreme degree. I’m so conscious of trying to keep a healthy body. I make sure I do scans and blood tests and screenings, so I don’t want to, like, live in the [fear], but, you know, you’re right. It’s weird, right? There is a little bit of, wow, I’m outliving this!”
If they didn’t save Bruce, Paltrow’s efforts to help him did eventually lead to her founding Goop in September 2008, initially with a newsletter (much maligned for saying things like “police your thoughts” and “eliminate white foods”) that has since expanded into a kind of multifaceted phenomenon, a way of being, with spin-off TV shows and outrageously expensive associated gift lists. (It hasn’t, of course, been without controversy: in 2018 Paltrow paid a $145,000 settlement for making unsubstantiated claims that the aforementioned jade eggs could help balance hormones, among other things.) Does it bother her that people have always been so negative about Goop, and by extension about her — especially given that much of what she historically endorsed is now more mainstream?
“I think it sort of has led to people not being so mean anymore.” Are people less mean? “For sure. When I was, early on, talking about this stuff, it was fun for people, but now — I’ve been pretty right about everything we’ve talked about. I think even skeptics are like, ‘Oh, yeah, well, you know, my aunt can’t eat gluten.’”
Has anyone apologized? “Hmm, that’s a good question. I don’t think so. Journalists aren’t that good at apologizing.”
Yeah. You’re right. We’re not. Sorry. Paltrow mimes typing, “I’m sorry, I’m wrong, I recant that.”
Did it ever upset you? Or did you just look at your sales figures and think, never mind? “Probably, in the early, early days, it upset me. My intentions were so good. I was really trying to bring another point of view and so I was like, ouch, why are people being so… why are people so upset about this?”
And now? “I don’t give a f***. I don’t care. I’ve turned 50, I don’t give a f*** what anybody thinks. I think if your intentions are good and you’re 50 years old, you really don’t care what anybody has to say.”
I ask Paltrow if any kind of alternative therapy has been too woo-woo even for her, if there’s a point where she thinks, nah, mate, this is bollocks. “I think these things are so individual. I’ve had some friends who’ll be like, ‘Oh, you’ve got to try this energy healer.’ And I’m just lying there thinking, this is so bad, get me out of this, like, how long is this going to last?’ But my friend thinks it’s life-changing, so …”
So, good for them? “Yes.”
Does she do anything hedonistic anymore? “I think it depends on what your definition is. I really love to sleep and lie around. I love on a Sunday to not do anything, watch rubbish TV and not make dinner and order in food. I really need one slovenly day.”
What rubbish are you watching on TV? “Oh my God! Love Is Blind, which is like so f***ing terrible and I can’t stop watching it. There are these dating shows on Netflix, like, Love on the Spectrum. That’s another thing Covid did. I had never seen a reality TV show until Covid. I had just never done it. Now it’s a slippery slope.”
Finally I ask Gwyneth Paltrow if she thinks she has an American Horror Story in her — if she’d star in Falchuk’s incredibly popular anthology show, renowned for drawing in huge stars for one-season arcs (Kim Kardashian is in the current series, Delicate). It has been some years since Paltrow appeared on-screen, her Wikipedia page describes her as being “on hiatus”, and I dunno, I kind of miss her. Don’t you? She is, in my mind, a definitive movie star.
So would she do an American Horror Story? “Oh, I can’t, I can’t. Not with my job. I have no bandwidth to do any acting right now. But if anyone could get me to act, it’s probably Brad.”
Which will have to do for now.
The Moments of Space Meditation app with Gwyneth Paltrow is available now on Apple and Google Play
Polly Vernon is a feature writer at The Times of London