Today, we have a Paltrow pod! I was stunned last week when Gwyneth Paltrow devoted a good portion of her British Vogue cover story to discussing my book, Gwyneth: The Biography. I had asked today’s guests — Linus Karp and Joseph Martin, the stars and creators of the play Gwyneth Goes Skiing — on the podcast in advance of the publication of that story (their play is running in New York again through November 16). We were able to discuss that, how Gwyneth might feel about their production, and much more.
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Chapters:
* Introduction
* About the Play “Gwyneth Goes Skiing”
* Revisiting View from the Top
* Gwyneth’s Reaction to the Play
* Interviewing Terry Sanderson
* Gwyneth’s Response to Gwyneth in British Vogue
1. INTRODUCTION
Amy Odell: It’s not often that I come across people who have spent maybe as much time thinking about Gwyneth Paltrow as I have. I published a biography of Gwyneth in July called Gwyneth: The Biography. The book is available wherever you buy your books. If you’re listening to this podcast on Spotify, you can listen to it on Spotify as well.
Today I’m interviewing Linus Karp and Joseph Martin who created and star in the play, Gwyneth Goes Skiing, a satire of the 2023 trial involving Gwyneth and retired optometrist, Terry Sanderson. The two famously went to court over a 2016 skiing collision in Deer Valley, Utah. Sanderson sued Gwyneth originally for $3.1 million in damages, claiming she skied into him, injuring him, and then skied off without helping. The initial lawsuit was thrown out. He reduced his demand for damages to $300,000, and he told me in an interview for my book that there was “no reaching out, no contact, no efforts by attorneys to resolve” the case out of court.
It was a crazy spectacle, live-streamed on the internet, involving Gwyneth Paltrow talking about her relationship to Taylor Swift, and Sanderson talking about his inability to go wine tasting after the accident. At the time, Vox called it “one of the most riveting shows featuring affluent white people, the limits of their kindness, the destruction they’re capable of, and the power they wield.”
In the end, the jury found Sanderson at fault. Gwyneth famously put her hand on his shoulder as she exited the courtroom and told him, “I wish you well.” But did she wish me well? She weighed in on my book in British Vogue last week. I’ll talk with Linus and Joseph about that and how they went about researching and understanding Gwyneth Paltrow and Terry Sanderson.
(Watch the video to see a clip from their show after my introduction.)
I’m here with Linus Karp and Joseph Martin, the brilliant minds behind the play with music Gwyneth Goes Skiing. Thanks for coming on the Back Row podcast.
Linus Karp: Thank you so much for having us. It’s very exciting.
Your production is at the Soho Playhouse in New York City, so those of you listening who are in New York, you can get tickets and go and it runs through November 16th.
Joseph: November 16th, yes, and then we will be in Aspen and L.A. in January, 2026, so if you’re based there, you can come see us there as well.
Oh my god, you’re going to Aspen.
Linus: We are performing at Gay Ski Week, and I feel like it’s just going to be incredible.
That’s where Gwyneth learned to ski.
Joseph: It feels only right that we would go there having also never set foot on skis in my life apart from this show on stage. Maybe this is finally the time I learn to ski.
You’ve never skied?
Joseph: Never done it. Never been. Nope. And actually, we really not even technically allowed to during this show in case we injure ourselves and we have no understudies. Maybe I won’t be doing it in Aspen after all. Yeah, insurance won’t let us.
That’s so funny. So I saw the show in January. You guys read my book, which is amazing. Thank you. And you shouted me out online somewhere because I shouted you out in the acknowledgements. Because my editor — I was finishing up the book, it was a three-year project for me, and she took me to dinner to talk about the last round of edits. So I’d been working really hard to file the book and I’m thinking about kind of nothing else but this book. She says, “Let’s go to dinner, but look at this — we have to go see this.” And I was like, “We do — we have to go see this.” So we had dinner and then we went to see your play. I feel like I’ll remember it for the rest of my life because it was such an epic moment in my life finishing this project, but then also it was the coldest night of the year. It was, like, nine degrees or something. We went to Balthazar and then we walked across Soho and saw the show and it was just so funny and great.
Linus: When the book came out, which was so exciting, having studied Gwyneth Paltrow extensively for this show — getting that much information, and then getting to the bit of the trial, you’re like, Oh my god, she mentions our show. And then we got to acknowledgements and we’re like, Oh my gosh, she’s praising our show.
Joseph: That was so, so wild for us.
We all three share the distinction of being Gwyneth historians.
Joseph: Yeah, exactly. The ultimate title.
It’s a small club. Linus, you play Gwyneth.
Linus: I do, yes.
Joseph, you play Terry.
Joseph: Yes, I do.
2. ABOUT THE PLAY
The show is hysterical. And then you guys have audience members play various other people, but that makes it all the more delightful. But it’s a satire of the trial and you kind of spin this whole story out of it, and I would like to know how you guys approached your research.
Linus: We obviously very much focused on the trial and watched those court transcripts, all the videos over and over, a lot of the interviews. And I really wish you’d have written your book a little bit faster. That would’ve been really helpful because — it’s so interesting, your book gets so many sides of it and not just Gwyneth’s perspective. I think when you often read interviews or watch interviews on talk shows, obviously you get the image that the star wants to project. So it’s really interesting to see all the other sides as well.
Joseph: I think when we wrote very early drafts of the show, we’re like, Okay, so before we delve into the research of it, what do we think we know about Gwyneth Paltrow? What are the tropes? Because if we start on our very base level of knowledge, that is likely to be the stuff that the audience also understand if they haven’t researched Gwyneth too much. So we know about Apple, we know about Goop, we know about consciously uncoupling, we know about Shakespeare in Love, film career, the jade eggs, the vagina candle. Let’s start with these as top notes, pepper those in throughout that script, then we can dive into the research.
Linus: Exactly. And also fictionalize a lot of it. We’re obviously playing with a fictional version of Gwyneth. I don’t believe the real life Gwyneth talks to animals or controls the weather, but in our version she does.
I thought it was hysterical how you made the deer of Deer Valley a character because the collision between Gwyneth and Terry Sanderson occurred in Deer Valley, Utah. What surprised you in your research about Terry Sanderson.
Joseph: When it comes to then researching someone like Terry Sanderson, sort of the nemesis, if you like, in the show — that is more of a challenge because you are still researching and representing a real-life person, albeit in a fictionalized world. There is so much less to go on with him than there is obviously for Gwyneth. What we have to go on is essentially the trial and any tidbits you can find out online. When you dive deep enough into someone, you find little extracts on websites in the middle of nowhere of the internet that mention something to do with his career or memberships he used to be a part of, and then you start to build more of a character of this man and how we think the two of them would’ve interacted.
Linus: We wanted to make him have the everyday struggles, contrasting to Gwyneth, who’s this Hollywood mega-star, cultural icon, flowing through life. Everything goes her way. Everyone is besotted by her. And we wanted, in our version, him to very much be the opposite of that.
Joseph: He was a member of the International Lions Club, which I had not encountered before, but is kind of this, if you like, good samaritan organization, where people from different services and backgrounds join together to help people less fortunate. It’s so funny talking about the creation of this real-life character when we put him in such silly scenarios in our show, but having in the back of my mind that he is a real-life person, who also has multitudes and does good things for other people, et cetera. It’s quite helpful to have in the back of my mind that yes, he may be the bad guy in this show, but that doesn’t mean that he is the bad guy in real life necessarily.
Linus: He’s sort of like the normal person in comparison to Gwyneth Paltrow, but he still went skiing at Deer Valley and traveled the world. I feel like he’s still better off than your average person.
He’s fancy.
Joseph: And that’s okay. You’re allowed to be, but the narrative of [him as] this average Joe off the street isn’t necessarily true about him either.
I kind of open the book talking about how she’s never had a normal life owing to her parents, who were super-respected and successful in Hollywood. Blythe Danner, the acclaimed actress; Bruce Paltrow, the acclaimed producer, director, writer; and her godfather is Steven Spielberg. That was kind of the through-line of the book for me. And — I think you guys have talked about this in your past interviews — but when you get to a courtroom, it’s like the great equalizer.
It’s like being at the airport and going through TSA. We are all equal in that moment. And I think that’s what made [the trial] so fascinating for me was that juxtaposition between Gwyneth as this just fancy, ethereal, iconic, beautifully dressed, Academy Award-winning person in this just very rote, drab, random-ass Utah courtroom.
Linus: That’s what just makes it so fun. And just talking about things that, to large extent, [were] so inconsequential — whether she knew Taylor Swift. Or, what was your loss from the coalition? And she said, “I lost half a day of skiing.”
Joseph: In order to understand even an element of who Gwyneth Paltrow is or who anyone is, you have to understand that background, right? And the world they grew up in. And that world is Gwyneth Paltrow’s normal and it is not the normal for the vast majority of the population.
Linus: I love Hollywood, especially Hollywood in the nineties. It’s so interesting to follow her in your book, follow her journey there, and how so many of her projects were critically panned or not successful, and that just never dimmed her star.
Joseph: It’s fascinating to see an Academy Award winner that her projects don’t define her. I think with so many actors that we’ve seen who have been in one panned movie — that does enough to tank their career, because we seem to associate exclusively them with that movie. I think it’s worth saying that having watched quite a lot of those panned movies, she often does the best with what she’s given.
3. REVISITING VIEW FROM THE TOP
I agree. I fully agree. I watched them too. Did you guys watch View from the Top?
Linus: Oh, we love View from the Top, it’s so enjoyable.
For those listening who are not Gwyneth historians like us, who haven’t seen View from the Top in recent memory — that is about Gwyneth as a flight attendant who grew up in a trailer, and she’s fighting to get to international first class. According to my reporting, the script was originally a dark comedy, and it was incredible. So Harvey Weinstein decides to make it, and they attach Gwyneth to it, and he says, “We can’t have Gwyneth playing some bitch,” or something like that. It was a classic Hollywood train wreck — rewritten, rewritten, rewritten. And it’s probably one of the worst movies she did, if not the worst.
Joseph: Yeah, it’s up there. It’s pretty trash,
But it’s not like that was her fault. That’s the thing — which I say in the book.
Linus: She does the best with what she’s given and it’s camp. It could be [like] Showgirls — this is so enjoyable, not necessarily for the right reasons.
Joseph: I feel like we’ve passed a statute of limitations on spoilers with a movie that came out as long ago as it did, but spoiler: The final shot of that movie, panning up through the airplane, and we’re like, Oh, what’s going on here? And then she’s the pilot. Oh my god, it’s transcendently camp. When people ask what camp means or what queer culture is, I just want to show them that 30-second shot. That’s it.
Linus: That’s the solution as well, being like, “Oh, Mark Ruffalo, my boyfriend, is going to live far away. How do we stay this? Well, I’ll just become a pilot! It’s that easy!” I love it so much.
It is more appreciated in retrospect, and the movie was supposed to come out around 9-11. They had the right instincts of — let’s [delay it]. My point is that the circumstances just did not help. But none of it was her fault. And why I think the flops are so significant in the story of Gwyneth Paltrow is because, yes, I agree with you — when you watch these movies that are not very good that she’s in, she’s kind of the best part of them. I think that that is true time and again. Qnd it helps you understand why she didn’t want to act anymore —
Linus: Yeah, that’s true.
I think it’s hard for a lot of people to understand why you wouldn’t want to be a movie star when you’re the number-one movie store in the world, and I think that when you’re an actor — and I’m not an actor, you guys are actors — but when you’re an actor, you are an ingredient in someone else’s recipe. And you’re kind of at the mercy of the director, the producers, the writing, the rewriting — all of these things that can go wrong. And you could sign onto a movie that becomes a very different kind of movie. So I can understand why she would want to start Goop and be the CEO of it — and she really wanted to be the CEO — because then she has the control.
Linus: I think that’s true. Obviously we’re sadly not on Gwyneth’s level of acting yet. No Oscars for us at the moment.
You’re on your way.
Linus: But that was one of the main reasons we actually started writing and creating our own shows. Now we can very much be in control of it. We’ve done projects that on paper looked good or sometimes are never even released or don’t turn out the way you want. Whereas when we create our own thing, at least we get to tell the story we want and present it the way we want rather than just being, as you say, an ingredient in a bigger soup.
Joseph: I think it’s very interesting. She’s talked about it interviews before — and you talk about it in the book as well — of how, after she wins her Academy Award, feeling like the whole industry then just went, Okay, so now you’ve reached the top. Now we have to pull you down. And that’s only going to contribute to you wanting to leave. She was the biggest movie star in the world, and she could easily have done something that so many people before her and after her have done of deciding, “Okay, I’m going to direct produce and star in a movie. And I’m going to co-write it as well, and have ownership [of a] project like that.” But she didn’t do that, and I think that’s a smart decision, especially because once she’s won that Academy Award, you feel like to an extent people are going to choose to hate whatever she does regardless of whether it’s actually good or not. So there’s something about the freedom of, as you say, founding Goop — something that is so completely different to what she was doing. She’s a very smart woman, and that is an excellent way to control the narrative of you as a public figure, to be like, “I now have the control of stepping out of this industry.”
Linus: I also think her return to acting is something that happens quite often. People always say, this is a big return to acting — but [while] she has not necessarily had that many major roles in the last 10, 15 years, she still does a film every couple of years or something, and they’re like, “Oh, this is Gwyneth’s return.”
I saw [your] show nine months ago. Are you incorporating some of the new stuff? Is Timothée Chalamet a character? (Ed. note: Gwyneth stars alongside him in the movie Marty Supreme, coming out later this year.)
Linus: I was on BBC [one day] — on the main page, the news was like, “Gwyneth Paltrow is now eating bread and pasta.” And you’re like, how is that a BBC news story?
How is it not a BBC news story?
Linus: And there are other pop culture moments. We had obviously the Cardi B trial recently. We give that a little nod as well.
That was pretty incredible.
Linus: Most of it is set, but we do play around with it and find ways to keep it fresh, especially as new things keep coming from Gwyneth — the book. Now we’re like, oh, what can we do from that? She’s got Marty Supreme coming out. We can reference that. We think of our shows as, like, this alive thing. We never want it to feel too static.
So is Timothée Chalamet a character?
Joseph: Not a character.
He figures in?
Joseph: Yeah, he’s referenced. He’s referenced directly once. Marty Supreme is mentioned a couple times. The audience participation helps with that as well. You have how many audience roles in this show? Is it six or seven roles that are exclusively played by the audience?
Linus: Seven.
Joseph: So people like Brad [Falchuk], Gwyneth’s, then-boyfriend.
That’s right — I’d forgotten about that.
Joseph: Terry’s then-girlfriend, now ex-girlfriend. People get involved and help us recreate the people that were involved in this.
You have just random people in the audience get on the stage or stand up and read cue cards essentially.
Joseph: We cast them before the show. We have a wonderful assistant stage manager, Kira Pigeon, who goes around with the roll cards and you get a sense of energy for a person, you get a vibe, and you say, “We’d love it if you would play this role.” The way it works is they get up on stage and they have their lines given to them by a monitor on stage, but they don’t know their lines before they say them, and we have a monitor facing the audience so that the pressure is off on that audience member to have to deliver this incredible performance. Because no matter what they do, everyone in the audience can see those lines as well. It’s not one of those things where we’re laughing at you or we’re putting you on the spot and making you feel like a bit gross.
Linus: New Yorkers are very good at it.
It’s just such an amazing contrast to the two of you, who are acting and really in it, so it’s very funny. I thought it worked really well and was really clever. Have you guys ever been to a Goop store?
Linus: Yes, yes, we went.
Tell me all about that. I went with my friend Emilia Petrarca, who interviewed me there to promote the book — and she writes a great newsletter on Substack called Shop Rat — but tell me about your experience there and if you bought something, what did you buy?
Joseph: We did.
Linus: We went to Brentwood [Country Mart].
That’s like ground zero.
Linus: Yeah, exactly. We went to the O.G. Goop store the first time we went to L.A. and we had a long look around at everything. Tried some of the clothes on, spoke to the staff there, who were lovely. They knew Gwyneth and they’d heard about the show. One of the staff said, “I’m going to go into a meeting with Gwyneth this afternoon, so I’ll tell her that you came to visit.” And we said, like, “Please invite her to the show. We would so love to have her there.” We never heard back, so I don’t think that’s happening any time soon.
Joseph: But what did we buy? We bought a lip gloss, we bought a sweater, we bought some dog treats. So Leland, who writes the music for our show, we were staying with him in L.A., so we bought some dog treats for his dog and we bought some sex oil for our agents — just as a nice little thing that can sit on the desk in a Goop gift bag.
Linus: I mean, they can do whatever they want with them.
Joseph: We were there for a long time.
Linus: And we went back twice. Actually, Gwyneth is the reason we now traveled to America multiple times and got to explore and experience so many amazing things. We’re like, well, we’ve got to give her some money.
I loved how you wore it in the show the sweatshirt that’s says Goop Depuis 2008.
Joseph: Which is also a stunningly beautiful sweater. It was really, really nice. We found that, we’re like, “OK, well I would want that — I think Linus would want that anyway.”
4. GWYNETH’S REACTION TO THE PLAY
Have you heard anything about Gwyneth’s thoughts about your show? Because you have on the poster that I saw on the Soho Playhouse website, this quote from Gwyneth at the top. It says, “I try not to engage much in [that kind of stuff].”
Linus: So she was asked about it in an interview. It was a profile, and the journalist spoke to us as well, and she told us that she’d asked Gwyneth about it and Gwyneth knew about it because Gwyneth had said at the time like, “Oh, I thought that was in London.” But yeah, she didn’t really say anything further than that, and we did email Goop as well to say that we’d love for them to come to the show and we’d sort tickets any night, but they never got back to us. So she knows about it, but she’s not been wanting to engage with it.
Joseph: No, and that’s okay. I think the thing is, we have heard from various people who have worked with her or are close to her — various sources. Love her or hate her, she does seem to have a good degree of self-awareness and a sense of humor, or [is] able to sort of step back and look at this kind of stuff. And we heard from someone who had worked with her previously when we went viral with the show originally being like, “I think she would really enjoy this.” I don’t expect her to come and see the show, because at what point could Gwyneth Paltrow come see a show about herself subtly and quietly that no one would ever know about?
Linus: We had lawyers from both sides, many of the witnesses from the trial, people from Deer Valley, people who’d worked for Goop, people who’d done Gwyneth’s hair and stuff like that, have come to see the show, and that’s been really fun. I think at this point, there’s probably been someone connected to Gwyneth come to see the show, to suss it out if nothing else, but I think that’s fair.
Maybe Brad Falchuk, because apparently he read my book, but she didn’t.
Joseph: Yeah, I saw that. I did see that. I mean, he’s a character in the show, so I wonder how he feels about his own representation.
Linus: He can come and play himself one night.
Right.
Joseph: Like I say, I do think she would enjoy the show. It is done with love and respect, and we poke fun, but — I mean, you’ve seen the show. We poke fun at everyone, and we poke fun at everyone equally because it’s a send-up.
It’s not mean. It’s absolutely not mean. I think it’s impressive the way you do it, and it’s satire and it’s parody, but it’s not mean. Your portrayal of her, Linus, is not cruel. The way you portray her was so smart, because she’s sort of this person who maybe has a sort of glazed look on her face, but she’s happy and cheerful and she lives in this remarkable, ritzy, not-real world, and I think you portray it with empathy as I tried to do, too, in my book.
Joseph: It was really interesting.
She might’ve seen that if she read it.
Joseph: In the chapter about the trial — I think when you talk about watching her react and respond to the scenario she finds herself in, and it points out kind of the struggle to keep the Hollywood, public persona face of listening and understanding and not trying to be visibly frustrated by this stuff, I thought is really fascinating. But I think going to court and going through a trial for anyone involved must be an exhausting process, sitting in that room every day, testifying or not, especially when you’re also trying to keep up the face of that ethereal, other-worldliness. Terry Sanderson can snap in court and be angry about a situation. But if Gwyneth Paltrow snaps and is angry and frustrated, that is worldwide news, so the pressure of keeping that up must be super-intense. I think it was really interesting to read the way you addressed that in the book.
5. INTERVIEWING TERRY SANDERSON
Thank you. Do you want to know how I came to talk to Terry Sanderson?
Joseph: Yes, please.
I think it was February of this year. It was ski season, because I remember talking about skiing. And I started learning to ski two winters ago — I’m from Texas and my parents were never skiers, so I never learned to ski growing up. But I just looked up his number and I called him and he answered the phone and we just talked. And he answered the phone, he said, because he was expecting a call from New York, and I have a New York area code.
He chatted pretty freely and he was very nice about it, and he basically said that he regretted it, and his lawyer came through the insurance company and he felt like he picked the wrong person. And it was just a really hard experience and that she was an impossible person to go up against. He said that he hadn’t been back on the slopes and he was mourning not being on skis, and it was, I guess, significant for him that the season was going by and he wasn’t up there with his buddies skiing.
Joseph: I mean, the man is also in his late seventies. Look, I’m not saying when you should or shouldn’t be skiing, right? I mean, I’m 30 years old and I’ve never skied.
It’s physically demanding. I can confirm that. I am a terrible skier and I can barely do it, but I can’t confirm that.
Joseph: Not skiing when you’re nearly 80 years old — I get it, I’m sure you love it. That’s really just amazing that he just picked up the phone and just spoke because as I said, we’ve never had any direct contact with him.
So you never tried to talk to him?
Joseph: No, no — and I think it’s probably — you want that separation. We know he knows about the show. People he knows have come to see the show. We performed the show in Park City, Utah twice. I don’t think it would’ve been necessarily helpful even for us to speak to him, because we are presenting such a fictionalized world in which this trial lives, and the bits that we do take from the world are verbatim. Kristin Van Orman, who was representing Terry as part of that wider team — I have a lot of time for Kristin. Understandably, she went viral for the moment she went viral for. We’ve met her. She’s a wonderful woman, and she understands why it went down the way it did online, but I think she was handed —
How did you meet her?
Joseph: She came to the show. She was great, and I think she was handed an almost impossible task of representing him in this particular case, and I feel for everyone involved in that trial on all of the sides.
Linus: I think obviously Kristin had just been dealt a very difficult hand and then tried to find alternative ways to go around the situation, which didn’t work out and ended up being quite hilarious.
He told me that he picked her because he has daughters and he wanted a woman. Then he was like, but that was the wrong choice.
Linus: I don’t know if there was a right choice for him to make.
That’s fair.
Linus: It’s always easy now, in hindsight, obviously to say that’s the wrong choice. He did it win. Would there have been a right choice? Is there an option that would’ve won him the case or made it look at least close? I don’t know.
Joseph: On a personal level, Terry — I just wish he had different facial hair, because I grow my facial hair for the purpose of the show and I’ll deal with this, but this isn’t a look I want to be having at 30 years old.
Not the vibe you want.
Joseph: No, not really. The dyeing of the hair — and I am happy to do it, but Terry, if you could have been clean-shaven, that would’ve been great for me.
Maybe he is now. I don’t know. We only talked on the phone. I didn’t get the opportunity to do a video podcast interview with him.
I know from having written two biographies — one about Anna Wintour, one about Gwyneth Paltrow — it’s very weird to spend so much time thinking about another person, and I’m just wondering how you dealt with that and if you experienced that, too. It sounds so weird to say, but it’s true — they enter your dreams. It’s a very weird way to work and live, I think.
Linus: Yeah, it is. I mean, with the Gwyneth show, it was kind of the second time I did that, because I did a show previously where I played Princess Diana. And what I do find, especially in the time leading up to first opening the show, is your behavior just changes. And I found that the vocabulary changes a bit and mannerisms change. Once you’ve opened, you’re sort of still into the character — it’s much easier to switch off. But as you are leading up to it, it’s like, Oh no, why am I saying these things or putting my voice slightly different in my mouth? I’m still struggling with the American accent, but finding a different voice compared to what I normally speak — I hope Gwyneth will leave me after a while, so I’m not going to have to be her all the time.
Joseph: I don’t know if it was the same for you when you were writing the book, as you say, they sort of inhabit your life in a way. We found it quite difficult at various points when we were really creating that show to talk about anything that wasn’t to do with her or the trial.
Linus: Gwyneth is everywhere in culture, so it’s like you’re watching a movie and you’re like, “Oh yeah, this guy starred opposite Gwyneth in this thing,” or you see a thing in fashion and like, “Oh, Gwyneth did a campaign for that.” I feel like everything just starts reminding you of her. You go and buy some fruit and you look at an apple and there she is again.
Joseph: How was it for you when you finished the final draft of the book and sent it off to the editors and you’re like, right, that’s that done. Because obviously such a long process for you as well.
Three years. How long did you guys work on the show?
Joseph: We didn’t have very long, actually — we were commissioned in August weren’t we?
Linus: We started writing it in September.
Wow. That’s so impressive.
Linus: That was the first version. It’s got a lot better since — it kept on changing.
6. GWYNETH’S RESPONSE TO GWYNETH IN BRITISH VOGUE
I finished [the book] Memorial Day weekend, and then it came out July 29th. It was like two months later. It was very fast. When I wrote about Anna Wintour, I had eight or nine months to sit around and prepare and rest a little bit. So it was very tiring to finish it and meet my deadline and finish the reporting and the fact-checking and the line edits and the end notes, which are extensive. When you write about a living subject, who’s still influential in culture, they’re going to come up. And Gwyneth was on the cover of British Vogue, which came out just a couple days ago, and I open Instagram and I see her. And I was like, “Oh, she must be promoting Marty Supreme.” I get the time to read the story, and then it’s about me — but I was so surprised.
Joseph: Yeah. What was that like? How do you process that?
It was just surreal. I feel I’m just like a mom, like getting by — and then it’s like you read about yourself in this British Vogue article. It was kind of surreal. And then I also just felt like reading the story — the way I portrayed her and sort of the media machinations around her in the book were beautifully illustrated by that story. So I think those were my takeaways.
What did you guys think of that story?
Linus: Yeah. It felt so harsh reading what she — I mean, having read the book and then seeing what she said about you, I think it was clear that she never wanted a book to be written or that she wanted to be looked at from every angle rather than just from the standard “here I am promoting something” angle.
Joseph: You don’t really see her speak that candidly about stuff very often because these things are so curated. I have never had a book written about me. I can’t judge what that situation is like to be in. But you do think if you took the time to read the actual book rather than relying on other people’s summaries of it who have a vested interest —
Brad Falchuk.
Joseph: Exactly. If I had a book written about me and Linus, my husband, read it and gave me his summary, I know that’s not going to be an accurate, unbiased opinion or summary, right? Of course it’s not. So I feel like, again, it’s impossible to judge what that situation feels like for her, but read the book if you are going to make a comment on it, because otherwise all you are commenting on are the industry’s responses, who we know either work with you or against you at the turn of a hat, as you’ve seen in your career, and the people who are close to you. Read the book and then by all means, say what you feel.
Linus: I mean, how did you feel? If you want to answer, but I feel like her saying that it was sexist in particular, I feel like that quite surprised me.
It doesn’t surprise me all that much because she’s suggested that before when critics have criticized Goop’s health coverage. It actually kind of reminded me of Jen Gunter, who’s the OBGYN who became pretty well known after she criticized some things that Gwyneth was promoting in Goop, because she feared that they were going to be harmful to her patients. They would send her, “I saw Gwyneth Paltrow said this, what do you think?” And she came out against the jade egg quite famously, and then Gwyneth responded to that, too.
I talked to Dr. Jen Gunter for a while for the book, and she was fantastic, and she’s actually a really great writer, a really funny writer, and she writes a newsletter about women’s health that’s great called The Vagenda. She wrote a blog post, I think it was on a WordPress, about the jade egg, and whole thing went so viral that she then got calls from The Atlantic. And she said she was overseas in the U.K. and it was her birthday — all of a sudden this happens. She’s just really surprised. “I am just someone trying to get good, accurate information on women’s health out into the world, and I just can’t believe that Gwyneth Paltrow is going to take the time to blast some chick with a WordPress.”
So I have been thinking about that a little bit myself. But what I also will say is people are not reading as much anymore, and nonfiction sales have not been what they were, which means people are not reading as many nonfiction books. So I think if a nonfiction book is in the conversation and Brad Falchuk is reading one, then that’s great.
Linus: Yes.
So thanks for supporting the genre, Brad Falchuk.
Linus: And also, because obviously they said the book was badly written — and I think it’s fair to say that obviously they don’t have to agree with things that are in it. But I think reading it — I think the impressive thing is it feels so thoroughly researched. You talked to over 200 people, it does feel like there’s so much work going in to every part of this, so I just feel like that’s not something that holds up.
Thank you. Thanks, guys. Do you guys have a show tonight?
Joseph: Yeah.
Okay. Do you have a pre-show ritual? Do you, like, snort Athletic Greens and burn some sage? I don’t know.
Joseph: Actually, do you know what? I’m addicted to — there is a Trader Joe’s just around the corner from the theater and they have a really good lemon turmeric cayenne drink thing that I am like —
Oh, like the Master Cleanse. Even though I’m assuming you’re not doing the Master Cleanse. Gwyneth has done the Master Cleanse.
Joseph: I feel very Health King. I ran down the Hudson River Park.
I love that.
Linus: Pre-show ritual. We have a slightly different one for every show. I mean there’s certain songs we always have in the playlist, and they change depending on what show we do. And when we’re doing Gwyneth, when I start my makeup, I always start by playing, “Please, Please, Please” by Sabrina Carpenter.
Joseph: That’s the beginning of my, Okay, now we’re here.
Not “The Fate of Ophelia”?
Joseph: Not going anywhere near that album. No.
Linus: Not good friends with Taylor Swift.
I like “The Fate of Ophelia.” I’m not at Swifty, but that song is catchy.
Joseph: That’s okay. Do you know what? I have not listened to it yet. I haven’t attempted it. Maybe I will. Folklore and Evermore are two my favorite albums. I really get everything I need from those
Linus: “Fate of Ophelia” is a nice song, but I feel like you want the one to get you in the mood for the [show]. And I feel like Sabrina Carpenter is just great. You want a bit of Sabrina, a bit of Beyoncé, a bit of Chappell.
Joseph: Gwyneth’s version of “Forget You” by Cee Lo Greene from Glee.
That’s right. What about the Country Strong song? She has so much in her canon.
Joseph: Yeah. There is another Country Strong song we will listen to occasionally. But we just stand together and have a moment where, because we are — as well as performing together, we are a real-life couple. We got married earlier this year.
Congratulations.
Linus: Thank you very much. We’re standing there holding hands, breathing and telling each other, “We’re going to have fun tonight.”
Joseph: Yeah. I say to him, “You are Terry Sanderson.” And I say, “That’s Dr. Terry Sanderson. You are Gwyneth Paltrow.” Silly things like that. But that’s our ritual for the Gwyneth show.
Linus: And then we feel ready.
Well, it’s a fantastic show. I enjoyed it so much, and I’m going to come see it again on October 21st. And we’re going to do a talk back at the end of the show, so if any of you listening or following Back Row, want to come and say hi, I will be there, hopefully signing books and yeah, I can’t wait. So thank you guys for coming on the pod. Good luck with your show. And enjoy Aspen.
Joseph: Yeah, thank you. We wish you well.
I wish you well.
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