Gwyneth Paltrow recently chatted with the Times of London to promote her latest gig – she’s teamed up with the meditation app Moments of Space. She’s being phased in as the eventual “voice” of the app. Like… I think Gwyneth is genuinely an underrated actress, but I’ve never thought her voice is particularly soothing or meditative. She actually has a really nasal voice. Anyway, the woman interviewing Gwyneth practically crawled up her ass and tried to make it sound like Gwyneth has been “proven right” about every half-baked pseudoscientific endeavor Goop ever shilled. It made for a nauseating read, but there are still some good quotes here. Some highlights:
On meditation: “I’d tried before but I did not get it. I first learnt 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.”
She has a sixth sense: “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.”
Empty nester: “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. 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.”
Defined by motherhood: “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.”
Before her father was diagnosed with cancer: “I was more like a Camel Lights and Diet Coke kind of girl. It worked for me, for a long time!”
Her father passed away at 58, and she’s 51 now: “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!”
She’s been right about everything: “I think it sort of has led to people not being so mean any more.” 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 sceptics are like, ‘Oh, yeah, well, you know, my aunt can’t eat gluten.’ 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?”
How she feels 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.”
Her guilty-pleasure TV show: “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.”
Editor’s note: Gwyneth Paltrow was not, in fact, right about everything. Gwyneth spent years preaching disordered eating, radically unhealthy elimination diets and starvation dressed up as “fasting.” Gwyneth amplified some silly, crazy and profoundly bad “treatments” to some medical conditions. I would not even say that Gwyneth was right even half the time. If anything, Goop (the platform) mostly served as an exposure of Gwyneth’s true nature, and her love of quacks and healers and all manner of sycophants-to-the-rich-and-stupid. Now, she did have a “sixth sense” about the wellness industry, but it’s much more complicated than that.
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