August 5, 2025 • 31 mins
Today on The Spill, we’re saying goodbye (again) to our favourite Sex and the City gals... with news that And Just Like That has officially been cancelled. We unpack the reactions from the show's cast and crew, what went wrong and right over its three-season run and how we're feeling about this bittersweet end.
Then, we deep dive into the new biography detailing Gwyneth Paltrow's life - because never fear, Laura's read the whole thing already so you don't have to. From the juiciest tidbits to the surprisingly raw insights about who Gwyneth really is and where she came from - we break down the book, deliver the highlights and share our verdict on whether or not it's worth your time.
LISTEN
Are you an And Just Like That mega fan? Check out We Have Notes For And Just Like That & Sarah Jessica Parker’s Famous Secret Boyfriend
Can't get enough Gwyneth? Listen to The Sex Story Gwyneth Paltrow Doesn't Want You To Hear & Our Plea To The Kardashians
And for even more Paltrow lore learn about The Wild History Of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Vagina Candle.
THE END BITS
Support independent women's media
The Spill podcast is on TikTok here and on Instagram here.
Read all the latest entertainment news on Mamamia... here.
Do you have feedback or a topic you want us to discuss on The Spill? Send us a voice message, or send us an email thespill@mamamia.com.au and we'll come back to you ASAP!
CREDITS
Hosts: Laura Brodnik and Ksenija Lukich
Executive Producer: Monisha Iswaran
Audio Producer: Scott Stronach
Mamamia studios are styled with furniture from Fenton and Fenton.
Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
So much.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and borders
that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
From Mamma Mia. Welcome to the Spill, your daily pop
culture fix. I'm Cassena Lukitch.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
And I'm Laura Brednick.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
So on the show today, Laura has been fiercely reading
the new Gwyneth biography by Amy O'Dell and we're going
to dive deep into that and get all of the
goths because Laura's been doing some hard work.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
But first, well, I hope you're all happy because after
all your complaining and nagging and just like that has.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Been well not canceled.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
I'm gonna go ahead and say it's been canceled because
it is now ending after season three. Show runner Michael
Patrick King has confirmed, I.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Feel like we kind of saw it coming and there
were so many people who hate watching it.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yes, I mean I post wasn't hate watching it. He
neither was on Yes, No, I know. Here's the thing. Like, obviously,
when it came out in its first season, the numbers
were super high. I think it was like for HBO Max,
like the biggest debut for their digital platform in the
numbers have continued to drop the season after season, but
they were still holding quite steady because I guess they
had that fan base of people watching and also the
(01:29):
people who will hate watching it.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I actually feel like it was hitting its stride a
little bit more in season three. I thought that too,
particularly with Charlotte, like christ and Davis got so much
flak and I've said this.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
Before for being like not very good in season one,
but I.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Feel like she's like really gotten better, and I was
starting to really love the Lisa, and like I thought
it was starting to hit it stride. I feel like
maybe Michael Patrick King was like, let's just end it here.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
We're done, Like it's let's not bet a dead horse.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
I have some questions around the whole cancelation thing because
I don't think it's as smooth and artistic as they're saying.
So Michael Patrick King said that as he was writing
the finale of season three, he just felt that it
came to a very natural, beautiful stopping point and he
was like, let's end it there. It's kind of interesting
because they kept that mostly a secret from the cast
and crew until this week, where they found out along
(02:26):
with everyone else, so they haven't formally said that the deadline.
The Industry publication has talked to a lot of people
behind the scenes and said that cast were very blindsided,
which I got from Kristin Davis, who plays Charlotte, from
her post saying that she was really heartbroken that the
show was coming to an end and she would miss everyone.
It felt like she just heard the news.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
It doesn't surprise me that much because I think sometimes
with these sorts of productions there are snap decisions, and
it could have potentially come from HBO Max, like they
either like you know, cut the budgets because the budgets
for the clothes are huge part.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
It's an expensive show to make. Also just all the
outdoor scenes, the extras. That's why recently I feel people
have been saying why it looks like they have no
friends because all the scenes of them in groups are
like really tiny. There's no one else in the cafes
and no one else in their houses. They're trying to
cut the extra budget down.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Yeah, it's very expensive to shoot in New York, Like,
it is very very expensive.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
The statement from SJP. She wrote like a.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Poem, Oh my god, that thing I love her on Instagram.
I just love everything about the whimsical way she writes.
I love her commitment to saying rabbit on the first
day of every month or she thinks her whole life
will fall apart. That statement from her needs to be
studied at.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Like a Harvard level.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
The twist, the turns everything she's saying, it's very poetic.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
My favorite part from it was about Carrie. She said,
I've been frustrated, condemned, and rooted for her, which I
thought was interesting because there will always so much criticism
around Carrie. But I don't think I've heard her criticized
Carrie before very much.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Oh like Sarah Jessica Parker.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Oh no, she has.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
I mean, but I think this is like well over
thirty years.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Yeah, Like she has obviously not agreed with things that
she's done, but she's always been wildly protective of her
mostly but you know, she's called her out for things
like you wouldn't like, kind of like you call out
a girlfriend from being like that was a bad move. Again,
I have criticisms of the show, and there's bits that
I've loved. And we'll get more into this when we
do our brulliofs review at the end of the season.
But I just really hate the idea of living in
(04:28):
a world without Carrie Bradshaw because they won't come back
after this.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
It's like, this is it, Yeah, this is it.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
This is it. Because I rewatched Sex and City and
then I was like, okay, so we've got six seasons,
two movies and three seasons even just like.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
That and not enough that I'm not even joking that's
not enough.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Only because I don't know about you, but I've watched
Sex and the City so many times over and over
and over again. I like burnt Intoto my brain too
much to the point where I need a little bit
of a break. So that's why I've been watching and
just like that over and over and over again. Sounds
like I have a lot of time in my hands,
but sometimes you get home super late at night and
you need a little hour decompress before you go to bed.
Like I can't consume new material of that time. I
(05:06):
need to comfort watch something, and the characters even when
just like that has been bad characters on my comfort watch.
So I don't love that they're going away.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
I did miss Kim Katrell, and I do. What did
you think of her host's cryptic as hell that was pointed,
there's no one on earth I can keepet.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
With me very much.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
A big week like it just I don't know, but
I feel like if that relationship had been better and
Kim had come back, it would have been different.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
It would have been different, But I don't I still think.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
That the people would have had critiques on her character.
People would have had critiques on her the way that
her character has changed. I think the storylines in the world,
like this world they created exists outside of any kind
of comedy drama on TV. It's created its own kind
of fantasy world, and I think she would have been
written into that. People even had issues with her cameo.
Even though she made a callback to like an excellent
(06:00):
Samantha storyline from season six with her English persona and
all that sort of stuff, people still had issues with
her tiny second cameo and the fact that it sometimes
it didn't feel like Samantha or she was putting on
a voice and she was only on screen for like
three minutes. So I feel like they definitely would have
had an issue with her in this show as well.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
But yeah, there's nothing anyone can do to.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Convince me that that post of her saying end of
a long Reek Sunrise, love Heart, all that sort of
stuff wasn't a dig at the show getting canceled.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Because she's so.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Online and every time anything happens within just like that
or Sarah Jessica Parker, she does something. She releases campaigns
at the same time she releases shows. She puts out statements,
never directly targeting them, but always in that world.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Laura, you know you said something at the beginning, but
I feel like, given your love of sex and the city,
you need to end it with your final thought.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Oh yes, let's bring this back full circle from the
top of this segment. I do hope you're all happy,
because I just do think that a lot of the
criticism and anger and ridicule might have contributed to this
decision because Michael Patrick King and Sarah Jessica Parker. Who
the other thing? Did Sarah Jessica Parker not tell the
other actresses that it was ending? She's been keeping that
in this long Is that going to be another feud?
(07:09):
I'm just going to say right now, I can't handle
that if these women aren't friends, so they made have
sought that shit out.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
But yes, everyone who would have killed the show, you
got what you wanted.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
I hope you're happy and you've just you've devastated me
and everyone else. La la la.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
So Laura has been painstakingly reading Gwyneth's book by Amy O'Dell,
which came out last week. I have only had the
chance to just skim through a couple of the sections,
so you're going to kind of be leading this. But
something that I didn't see coming out in a lot
of the extracts before we got the book is her childhood. Like,
(07:47):
I mean, I knew she was a NAPO baby, but
I didn't think I knew how.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
Much of a silver spoon she had.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yes, she did grow up very, very wealthy. So her
father was film producer Bruce Paltrow. Her mother was an
actress blithe Danna, who was meant to be when she
started out like the biggest movie start in the world.
Like she was reading out Meryl's Street for roles, which
is so interesting looking at where Gwyneth ended up. She
hated the fame and like the glare of publicity, and
she hated doing press junkets, so she kind of moved
(08:18):
away from that. And what's interesting is that when Gwyneth
was young, she would be asked if she wanted to
be an actress like her mother, and she would say, no,
I want to be a movie star like Meryl Streep.
So she kind of did want that fame from early on.
Can I just say At the start of the book
starts with like her parents' backstories and how they found fame,
and how they fell in love working on a play
together and their backstory. It goes into Gwenneth being born
(08:39):
and then follows her all the way to present day.
My biggest takeaway from the start of the book is
that Gwyneth Paltrow as a teenager terrifying. I'm having nightmares
about this girl and ever coming across her and having
to deal with her.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
The bit that I got through was that first bit,
because that's a bit that fascinates me the most, and
the bit where she was like with someone asked her
if she thought she was going to be famous.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
She's like, no, I know, I am.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Yes, but that even like, yes, she grew up rich,
she grew up around a lot of privilege. She grew
up acting in these like very specialized you know, summer
camp programs with her parents where other people had to
come in audition. But if you were the child of someone,
like they weren't even hiding their nepotism. If you were
the child of someone, you progressed through the acting camp
system and all these sorts of things. And because she
(09:24):
was so beautiful and got away with everything and had
this charmed life, Like when she was in high school,
she was smoking like a pack of cigarettes a day,
which she did all the way through her twenties. I
was like, I know she's super happy now, but I'm like,
how is that woman still standing? And her dad was
friends with Madonna, So when she was in high school,
Madonna wrote her a letter and was like, hey, Gwyneth,
like cool girls live longer and they don't smoke. And
(09:46):
Gwenneth took it to school and like presented it to
the class, framed it, put in her bedroom and kept smoking.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Like that's the kind of life she was living.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
And then she went through like some weird kleptomaniac phase
which she was stealing. She was a.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Yeah, when she was a kid, she would steal stuff,
which again a lot of kids do.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
I'm pretty sure I did. Actually I had a lot of.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Weird things where I'm like, I was reading Gwen's life
and thinking that this is actually mirrors back to me,
which is weird.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
One time I stole lollipop from our local corner store.
I came home, my mom and dad found it. They
drove me back up to the corner store. I was
in tears at this point, walked me in and made
me return it and apologized profusely for taking it, and
then I never took anything again.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Well, I don't think Gwenne's had quite that reaction, because
when her parents came in for her stealing, they were
just like, oh, you know, she's got a younger brother.
Now she's not feeling a center of attention. And her
dad was like, oh sure, be okay.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
The biggest thing I think that really shaped Gweneth as
a woman is the daddy's girl of it all.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Yes, there's a lot of that throughout the book, which
is something she's spoken about so much. Both her parents'
stories come into those first few chapters of the book,
like there's her mum moving them all to like a
completely different state so they could attend like a nicer school,
and her dad being like very worried that she wasn't
very smart in school, and like what was going to
happen to her and all these sorts of things, and
also him like forbidding her from going out and smoking,
(11:11):
going out to parties all night, going to raise dating
these boys. Like she was like quite a wild child
as a teenager, which doesn't fit with her kind of persona. Now.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
She's still friends a lot of her high school friends,
so they wouldn't be interviewed for the book really except
to give like a few little platitudes here and there.
But other girls at school would talk about, like her
first day.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
At this really fancy prep school, she came in this
outfit that she had selected and it kind of didn't
hit the mark. The cool girls didn't want to be
friends with her, so she slipped out after school and
came back in this like really cool outfit. So she
went home and like completely redid her image and came
back and the cool girls accepted her, and they talked
about the girl on the striped shirt who they weren't
(11:49):
sure about, and that was her, But she had remade
herself like in one afternoon to be accepted, and then
she kind of took over and became their leader. And
like she would freeze different people out and she was like.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
Moving would have bullied me, God.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
She would have. She wouldn't even looked of my direction,
which are kind of made me feel in a safer
zone of like these mind games that she would play
with her friends.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
But this is kind of the best effort of the
Australian school system and like the English school system where
everyone has to wear school uniforms.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Oh one hundred percent, because there is none of that,
like everybody has to wear the same thing.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
Sure, some girls are gonna hike.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Their skirts up a little bit or tape of things
in or I used to roll my sleeves up which was.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
Very much not allowed, or leave my top button under one.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
I feel like it's a bit of an equalizer, whereas
in American schools it's so much more obvious.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Yeah, exactly, especially I guess like everyone at this particular
school was like very wealthy and came from these different backgrounds,
so like there was that level playing field there. But
Gwyneth kind of like ascended to be the queen bee,
and apart from like deciding who was in and who
was out and sometimes isolating people, she also just had
this thing where she like didn't care. Like there's this
story that one of her classmates tells about them standing
(12:59):
in the locker room putting their swimmers on.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
To go and dope.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
And all the girls hated this like green swimsuit they
had to wear. It was really unflattering and they hated
putting them on. But Gwyneth loved putting hers on because
she would just like put it on because she was
so beautiful. And she said that she looked over this
other girl who she wasn't friends with, and looked her
up and down, like stared at her in the eye
and then said, isn't it interesting how everyone's body is different? Oh,
and then like walked away, and this girl is like,
(13:24):
I still think about it to this day. I don't
want to paint this like you because again I've read
the whole book now, don't want to paint this like
Gwyneth is evil, because there's a lot of lovely stuff
in there about her. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
I think that that comes from being so spoilt rotten
by your father. Yeah, and he really did. And her
brother Jake was kind of ignored. He's still in the industry,
he's around. But I think Gwyneth was very much the
golden child, like Bruce took her to Paris for you know,
(13:57):
I want to be the one to take you to Paris.
I want to be the one to give you everything.
And I think she was really spoiled in that moment.
And I'm not saying that people don't grow up and change,
but that is such a crux of her her upbringing.
Is that confidence that she received at a very early age.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Yes, yes, absolutely, And as she said, like I've read
the whole book now and there's not any big, huge,
scandalous reveals that we kind of already didn't know about
her life, which I think is what a lot of
people wanted. But what I think is all like the
little stories that are sprinkled through about these big moments
that were like maybe public but just hadn't been told before.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
But yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
As she became a movie star, she was very much
like not wanting to be famous. It's like she went
to her mother's way for a little bit where she
wanted to be a really serious actress. She was chasing
down these very serious roles. People would say. She would
come on to set like very prepared, but also like
what you're saying of like coming from this like privileged
world that she would say like she wanted to sit
in the assistant director's chair while she was watching her
(14:57):
mother do a scene, so he just had to move
and he went outside and was like, that's my chair,
but they just had to do it. Also in the book,
it's linked to like you don't wanted to find her
by her romances, these big public stories that she's had,
but they are kind of bookmarks of her career. And
she said in so many interviews which I hadn't kind
of picked up before, is that she thinks that she
actually has become famous over time for her romance is
(15:20):
not her roles, which I thought was interesting because when
I look back, I never see Gwyneth Paltrow as like
someone who's been defined by a boyfriend, but she kind
of was for twenty years.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Well, I mean, yeah, I see that. I know she
won the Oscar and she's obviously been in a lot
of movies, but I do tend to agree with that
a little bit. It's almost like it kind of reminds
me of, you know, you're Elizabeth Hurley in your Vesace
dress with Hugh Grant, like that was her moment and
(15:49):
I feel like Gwenos with Brad, with Ben Affleck like
that kind of Each time she dated someone more famous,
it escalated her career more and more and more.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Yes, in the book, it talks about the fact that
she was trying out for all these roles and she
kept losing to like Julia Ormond or other actresses the
time who were be a bit more prevalent than her.
But she did a screen test with Brad Pitt for
Legends of the fall Man Great Chemistry, so he was
the one who wanted her on seven. Obviously she was
already an actress. That kind of catapulted her to fame
in a different way because she and Brad became this
(16:24):
kind of duo where she would do a lot more
like it's talked about in the book that she would
go and do a lot more pressed because people wanted
her to talk about Brad, and because she was so young,
she would just give all these details about their relationship
and they would go and pose together, and she would
bring him to an event and things like that, not
kind of realizing how intense the whole thing was. It's
(16:44):
kind of interesting because she was only twenty two and
he was like thirty three. When he proposed to her,
and in the book it's like it comes out of nowhere.
Then they had this kind of back and forth over
their age gap, which I feel is like we kind
of thought they broke up because she thought he was
like not in her league, which comes out in the
book as well, but it also is a thing of
(17:05):
like he was in his thirties, he was ready to
settle down and have kids, and she was like kind
of just starting her career.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Yeah, And I think, particularly in that era, the woman
as the handbag was very prevalent, like where Gwyneth was
is and was particularly back then, the most stunning woman.
So having a person like that on your arm is
going to immediately elevate your career too. And I'm sure
(17:31):
she took advantage of that, but it doesn't negate the
work and the success that she's had since then. But
do we hear anything else because I didn't get to
these chapters. Do we hear anything else about the later
loves of her life, particularly Chris Martin?
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Yes? And actually it's so interesting how it's, you know,
how kind of like we thought when Taylor so released her,
Albert was going to be all about Joe Olwen because
they'd been together for ages, but it was mostly about
Manny Healy because he's the one that kind of stuck
in her world a bit more. I feel like, for
Gwyneth Paltrow, that's Ben Affleck and kind of kind of
realize how tumultuous their relationship was.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
I guess she kept it more.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Like there's quotes from Ben Athwick saying they would go
to events and people would say can we take a
photo of you together, and that he would say no, sorry,
Gwenneth said no, Like Gwenna said no to this, like
she was the one who was kind of calling the shots.
And I kind of understand that because there's these stories
of like how intense the fandom around her and Brad
Pitt was, not just from the press but from the public,
(18:30):
that they would just get followed everywhere by fans who
were obsessed with them being together. And there's this one
story in the book where they were traveling and so
they were in this hotel. They had security guards outside
and the throng of people outside, the fans who found
out that they're kept growing and growing growing, and then
this one woman like scale the fence and snuck into
the hotel and like got into their room and all
(18:51):
of a sudden, like it's just like Brad Pitt and
Gonneth Paltrow in this room, and this young woman appears
and everyone starts screaming and security comes in. And if
this story is true, it made me like Gwyneth Paltrow
because apparently she was obviously quite shocked because there was
a stranger in her hotel room with Brad, but then
she clocked that it was a teenage girl and the
secure girl but like grabbing her and pulling her, and
(19:12):
so apparently Grunna like ran across the room and like
pull the security guards off the young girl and was
like shielding her and trying to protect her and being
like she's not trying to hurt her, she's not crazy,
she's just like she's so young, like she didn't know
what she was doing. I'm sure the girl like got
into the hotel and was like, shit, I didn't think
this is gonna happen.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
What do I do now?
Speaker 1 (19:28):
And so I think that level of fame for them
kind of made her keep her bent athletic relationship out
of oppress, like to an extent.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
I love that, and I think that That's probably one
of the things that not that this is ever an
option for me, but that level of fame is so
terrifying because you just like people can be a little
and you don't know whether it is I think teenage
girls is one thing, but you don't know whether it
is an obsessive stalker like murdery vibe, or it's just
(19:59):
someone who is so in love with you and thinks
they know you and thinks that they have a relationship
with you and like a teenage girl. So I really
I do respect that she kind of took that and
said let's just all take a breath here, because I
think the initial reaction would be take her down, get
her out, we need safety. But I think when as
(20:22):
seeing past that and going, oh, she's just a girl
who loves Brad.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Yeah, and look at the time, didn't we all Yeah,
it's not interesting when she talks about meaning Ben athlete,
it was kind of this idea that she'd finally met
someone who was her equal, which is kind of interesting
because I always think of Ben Affleck as like more
of that kind of like he talks about growing up
on the streets of Boston and like this rough upbringing
and like being in high school and him and Matt
Damon like hatching plans to be famous and all this
(20:47):
sort of stuff. But when Gwyneth Paltro met him, and
I guess this kind of is probably true, she was like,
he grew up in Cambridge, he came from all educated background.
He knew about the things, he knew about literature, he
knew about worldly things. And after having to like train
Brad Pitt and Caviat and all these sorts of things.
And there's also this story where she had organized for
her and Brad Pitt to go visit like these beautiful
(21:08):
spots in Russia and stuff, and he was late. He
missed the like deadline for them to go in, and
so she was just I think she hated Brad Pitts.
So reading between the lines, she hated Brad Pitt so
much in their last year of being gaming.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
I get it, And I think, like classicism and you know,
difference in the way that you were brought up, I
completely understand that.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
It just gives me the egg a little bit.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
I mean, I don't know, like it's just I understand it, though,
I do understand it. When you're brought up in a
certain way, and someone doesn't follow the rules that have
become innate in you, you don't even have to think
about them anymore.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
I just love this idea of like seeing like Gwanavan
and Brad Pitt being like the hottest couple in the
world and everyone's obsessed with them. They're planning this big
wedding and her being like, I just hate being alone
with you is just so funny. But she was obsessed
with ben Affleck. She met him, she thought he was
the smartest person that she'd met. And the other thing
is he thought she was the smartest woman he'd ever
dated at that time. And she talks about like as
(22:08):
much as he kind of ignored her a lot. And
it's like he's playing really hot and cold with her,
Like ben Affleck in his like twenties and thirties, working
at a level that is like quite intense with his
dating life.
Speaker 4 (22:18):
I'm going it does a surprise me. Yeah, Nan, But
what about Chris Martin. I want to know a little
bit more about the cold Play years.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
That's an interesting one because she went back and forth.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
I mean, she obviously dated lots of other people, but
ben Affleck was kind of her like other big public romance,
they broke up, they got back together. She called him
to do a movie with her because she was like,
that's where our relationship is right now, like the intensity
of them kind of. And I think they actually broke
up and got back together more than we even know
in the public eye kind of from the book is
that they just kept trying to make it work because
(22:49):
they were so drawn to each other. And she says
so many times how good the sex was, over and
over again, like that's the one thing that she wants
on the record. She met Chris Martin kind of, I
mean obviously that they were together for a long time
and they had two kids together, and she talks about
like motherhood stripping her ambition for a while, but also
that he was just like this really safe landing space
(23:10):
for her after her father died, because that was a
huge trauma in her life and she was feeling like
very burned by the industry and just wanting this safe
place and Chris Martin kind of was that for her.
It's also interesting how much she saw her divorce from
him as a failure, which is something I didn't really
know about her as much. So in the book, they
get into like the whole group situation, which is also
(23:32):
interesting because her wellness addiction. I thought always from this
idea of her wanting to like look a certain way,
because you know, she says she said publicly, and she
said through the book as well that looking unhealthy, being overweight,
looking tired are her like biggest kind of fears that
she has. But in the early days of starting her
(23:53):
Wellness Empiring group, she told like her close family and friends,
that cancer had taken everything from her, had taken her
loved ones. She lived with this really intense fear. She
talks about like hosting this lunch in her backyard and
feeling her hand going numb and getting a headache and
thinking that she was dying, and hearing her kids play
in the yard and thinking, what if I got so
sick I couldn't look after them. And afterwards the doctor
(24:15):
was like, it wasn't a stroke. It was probably like
a bit of a migraine accentuated by a panic attack.
But she then went on this whole big thing where
she went to all these different gurus and helped people
and doctors, like looking for something to like make her
never think that she was going to die again. And
so I think the whole group thing is very linked
at this like fear she has of dying or being
unwell or someone in her life being unwell. So she
(24:37):
turned to all these like alternative medicines and was like,
if I just eat this and I drink this, then
I'll live forever and so will my family.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
And look, she's not the first person to do this.
You know, Eastern medicine has been around for thousands of years.
We know that.
Speaker 4 (24:49):
But you know, those were the.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Bait hitting stories, you know, the vaginal steaming and the
lots of vagina stuff and vagina candles and I mean
all of that stuff, you know, was so tied up
in her brand and so baity. But she has really
built an empire and before a lot of other people
(25:12):
jumped onto that train in terms of commercializing it.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Which again, so it's like throughout the book it because
they've interviewed so many different people, they talk about her
wanting to like monetize it and make all this money
and everything like that, but it's also just yeah, was
linked to this idea of her also wanting to build
a business. And it's kind of interesting because the story
that she tells publicly is this whole thing of like
she didn't know only know what she was doing and
she had to google like business phrases under the table,
(25:41):
whereas behind the scenes people were saying that she is
a lot more involved and a lot more like not
that she knew what she was doing, but she's kind
of like was trying to be the boss behind the
scenes in a really intense way. There's not that much
stuff in there also in the book about like her
Like there's obviously like behind the scenes of parties and stuff,
but it's more her like kind of granular life around
kind of like yeah, building her business or being a mother,
(26:03):
or like how she reacted to scandals. But there are
a few stories and how we talked about the Madonna story,
how there was that story around how her friendship with
Madonna broke up and that made headlines when the excerpts
from the book came out. There's also a story there
about how she and Minnie Driver stopped being friends. Oh yeah,
and also the Wanona writer stuff like the Merry Driver
and Ben Affleck weren't they in Yeah, So this is
(26:24):
kind of what I was interested in. Again, she's got
a lot of her same friends that she's had since
primary school. So I'm not saying that she's like a
bad person she can't keep friends, but I think there
was such a spotlight on the years over her romantic
relationship with stars, but also these big celeb friendships. So
in the book they say that like it was that
holiday that Madonna like invited her cell phone, came to dinner,
screamed at her daughter, and Chris Martin's like, we're never
(26:45):
seeing her again.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
She's toxic.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
So even though Gwyneth had been like friends with her
since she was a child and she was kind of
like a godmother to her, that relationship ended. And then
the Warnona Writer thing ended over the Shakespeare in Love script,
which the book says that Gwyneth was offered she barely
read the script because she had just done Emma and
she had actually put Warnona Writer's name forward from it.
(27:08):
This is the only part of the book I fel
like gwen It's involved in She was like I want
this rumor crush and she's somehow like planted this, and
then the movie came around to her.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Again and she took it.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
So there was no way that she was trying to
take Wanona write her down is her official story, but
in the book so Yes, Mini Driver had been cast
in Goodwill Hunting, which was Ben Affleck and Matt Damon's
big move. First move they worked on won an oscar.
This huge story of these like two young guys from
Boston making this incredible movie. On the movie, Matt Damon
and Minnie Driver started dating. They were together for a while,
(27:39):
so it was just like Fourceim in Hollywood. It was
Matt and Minnie and then Ben and Gwen, great couple names.
And then after a while Matt started to want to
break up with Mini Driver. And apparently I would love
Mini Driver's take on this, because apparently Gwenneth hated her.
She called her an air kiss friend. And one of
the interesting things from the book is that if Gwenneth
doesn't like someone, she makes a vomit face behind them
(28:01):
when they talk.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
Is that not the.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
It's like it's brought up in the early years when
she's in her twenties, and I was like, maybe that's
something she did her twenties. Her. I'm so scared of her.
I just never want to be around her, and I
also love her. It's so weird in the and then
at the end of the book, they're talking about her
being a meetings for people in group not doing things
that she doesn't like, and how she would kind of
push people out and they would come and resign and
she'd be like, oh you're leaving, Oh no bye kind
(28:27):
of thing, and then as soon as they lead, they're like,
Gwyneth would do her signature vomit face, and I was like, what,
She's still doing that in her fifties, which is honestly
iconic behavior. So apparently she would call Mini Driver an
air kiss friend, like someone that she would air kiss
but would never engage with, and would make the vomit
face behind her every time she talk.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Okay, So I just want to clarify because I feel
like we've been quite scathy. Is Amy O'Dell telling a
true story on this? Is this a takedown?
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Like?
Speaker 4 (28:56):
Is this an honest representation?
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Very fair. I didn't end the book disliking Gwyneth. I
left finished the book terrified of her, But I also
finished the book like she's just an interesting person. Absolutely,
But it was so funny because like in the Mini
Driver part, the point where he broke up, where she
broke up with Matt Damon was kind of orchestrated by
Gwyneth because Matt wanted to break up with her, and
so Minnie left the house that day and came back,
(29:19):
and so she got mugged. So Matt had comforted her
and gens like, she's lying, she didn't get mugged, and
like then made ben Affleck agree with her. And then
the next day she said she got mugged again, and
Courtne's like, sorry, absolutely lying, and then that relationship broke down.
They've never spoken since, And I just kind of think
it's funny that there's this line from like that behavior
(29:41):
through to kind of like the end behavior of her now.
But the book finishes on this note where it's like
she's married now to Brad Foulchek. Apparently they're very happy.
There was an insinuation that she was with Brad at
the same time she broke up with Chris Muttin. But
it's really interesting because that's the time where Amy O'Dell
jumps in and says, I couldn't find anyone to verify
that rumor.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Okay, So because I feel like we're gonna run out
of time.
Speaker 4 (30:05):
Out of five jade eggs.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
What do you give the Gwyneth Paltrow biography.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Look maybe four four if you're already interested in her
to a certain extent. If you're not interested in her,
you won't care about this book. If there's an interest
in her in some way.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
This is a good read.
Speaker 4 (30:23):
Okay, I'm definitely going to read it. I'm going to
finish it.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
I've only been sort of skimming it, and I just
didn't want you to give away everything. But there's so
many great stories in there. I definitely want to know
more about Chris. And yeah, absolutely fascinating and well done
Laura for power reading this book and the Gwyneth biography
is available now, and yeah, tell us.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
Your thoughts well.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Thank you so much for listening to this Spill today,
and a very special thank you to Laura for her
deep dive into Gwyneth's biography. Do not forget to follow
this Spill on Instagram and TikTok, and also make sure
you check out Morning Tea which is at eight am
and then you'll see us at three pm. This bill
is produced by Manisha Iswarren with production by Scott Stronik.
Speaker 4 (31:12):
Bye Bye, Love h
So much.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and borders
that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
From Mamma Mia. Welcome to the Spill, your daily pop
culture fix. I'm Cassena Lukitch.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
And I'm Laura Brednick.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
So on the show today, Laura has been fiercely reading
the new Gwyneth biography by Amy O'Dell and we're going
to dive deep into that and get all of the
goths because Laura's been doing some hard work.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
But first, well, I hope you're all happy because after
all your complaining and nagging and just like that has.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Been well not canceled.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
I'm gonna go ahead and say it's been canceled because
it is now ending after season three. Show runner Michael
Patrick King has confirmed, I.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Feel like we kind of saw it coming and there
were so many people who hate watching it.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yes, I mean I post wasn't hate watching it. He
neither was on Yes, No, I know. Here's the thing. Like, obviously,
when it came out in its first season, the numbers
were super high. I think it was like for HBO Max,
like the biggest debut for their digital platform in the
numbers have continued to drop the season after season, but
they were still holding quite steady because I guess they
had that fan base of people watching and also the
(01:29):
people who will hate watching it.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I actually feel like it was hitting its stride a
little bit more in season three. I thought that too,
particularly with Charlotte, like christ and Davis got so much
flak and I've said this.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
Before for being like not very good in season one,
but I.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Feel like she's like really gotten better, and I was
starting to really love the Lisa, and like I thought
it was starting to hit it stride. I feel like
maybe Michael Patrick King was like, let's just end it here.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
We're done, Like it's let's not bet a dead horse.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
I have some questions around the whole cancelation thing because
I don't think it's as smooth and artistic as they're saying.
So Michael Patrick King said that as he was writing
the finale of season three, he just felt that it
came to a very natural, beautiful stopping point and he
was like, let's end it there. It's kind of interesting
because they kept that mostly a secret from the cast
and crew until this week, where they found out along
(02:26):
with everyone else, so they haven't formally said that the deadline.
The Industry publication has talked to a lot of people
behind the scenes and said that cast were very blindsided,
which I got from Kristin Davis, who plays Charlotte, from
her post saying that she was really heartbroken that the
show was coming to an end and she would miss everyone.
It felt like she just heard the news.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
It doesn't surprise me that much because I think sometimes
with these sorts of productions there are snap decisions, and
it could have potentially come from HBO Max, like they
either like you know, cut the budgets because the budgets
for the clothes are huge part.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
It's an expensive show to make. Also just all the
outdoor scenes, the extras. That's why recently I feel people
have been saying why it looks like they have no
friends because all the scenes of them in groups are
like really tiny. There's no one else in the cafes
and no one else in their houses. They're trying to
cut the extra budget down.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
Yeah, it's very expensive to shoot in New York, Like,
it is very very expensive.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
The statement from SJP. She wrote like a.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Poem, Oh my god, that thing I love her on Instagram.
I just love everything about the whimsical way she writes.
I love her commitment to saying rabbit on the first
day of every month or she thinks her whole life
will fall apart. That statement from her needs to be
studied at.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Like a Harvard level.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
The twist, the turns everything she's saying, it's very poetic.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
My favorite part from it was about Carrie. She said,
I've been frustrated, condemned, and rooted for her, which I
thought was interesting because there will always so much criticism
around Carrie. But I don't think I've heard her criticized
Carrie before very much.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Oh like Sarah Jessica Parker.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Oh no, she has.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
I mean, but I think this is like well over
thirty years.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Yeah, Like she has obviously not agreed with things that
she's done, but she's always been wildly protective of her
mostly but you know, she's called her out for things
like you wouldn't like, kind of like you call out
a girlfriend from being like that was a bad move. Again,
I have criticisms of the show, and there's bits that
I've loved. And we'll get more into this when we
do our brulliofs review at the end of the season.
But I just really hate the idea of living in
(04:28):
a world without Carrie Bradshaw because they won't come back
after this.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
It's like, this is it, Yeah, this is it.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
This is it. Because I rewatched Sex and City and
then I was like, okay, so we've got six seasons,
two movies and three seasons even just like.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
That and not enough that I'm not even joking that's
not enough.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Only because I don't know about you, but I've watched
Sex and the City so many times over and over
and over again. I like burnt Intoto my brain too
much to the point where I need a little bit
of a break. So that's why I've been watching and
just like that over and over and over again. Sounds
like I have a lot of time in my hands,
but sometimes you get home super late at night and
you need a little hour decompress before you go to bed.
Like I can't consume new material of that time. I
(05:06):
need to comfort watch something, and the characters even when
just like that has been bad characters on my comfort watch.
So I don't love that they're going away.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
I did miss Kim Katrell, and I do. What did
you think of her host's cryptic as hell that was pointed,
there's no one on earth I can keepet.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
With me very much.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
A big week like it just I don't know, but
I feel like if that relationship had been better and
Kim had come back, it would have been different.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
It would have been different, But I don't I still think.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
That the people would have had critiques on her character.
People would have had critiques on her the way that
her character has changed. I think the storylines in the world,
like this world they created exists outside of any kind
of comedy drama on TV. It's created its own kind
of fantasy world, and I think she would have been
written into that. People even had issues with her cameo.
Even though she made a callback to like an excellent
(06:00):
Samantha storyline from season six with her English persona and
all that sort of stuff, people still had issues with
her tiny second cameo and the fact that it sometimes
it didn't feel like Samantha or she was putting on
a voice and she was only on screen for like
three minutes. So I feel like they definitely would have
had an issue with her in this show as well.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
But yeah, there's nothing anyone can do to.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Convince me that that post of her saying end of
a long Reek Sunrise, love Heart, all that sort of
stuff wasn't a dig at the show getting canceled.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Because she's so.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Online and every time anything happens within just like that
or Sarah Jessica Parker, she does something. She releases campaigns
at the same time she releases shows. She puts out statements,
never directly targeting them, but always in that world.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Laura, you know you said something at the beginning, but
I feel like, given your love of sex and the city,
you need to end it with your final thought.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Oh yes, let's bring this back full circle from the
top of this segment. I do hope you're all happy,
because I just do think that a lot of the
criticism and anger and ridicule might have contributed to this
decision because Michael Patrick King and Sarah Jessica Parker. Who
the other thing? Did Sarah Jessica Parker not tell the
other actresses that it was ending? She's been keeping that
in this long Is that going to be another feud?
(07:09):
I'm just going to say right now, I can't handle
that if these women aren't friends, so they made have
sought that shit out.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
But yes, everyone who would have killed the show, you
got what you wanted.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
I hope you're happy and you've just you've devastated me
and everyone else. La la la.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
So Laura has been painstakingly reading Gwyneth's book by Amy O'Dell,
which came out last week. I have only had the
chance to just skim through a couple of the sections,
so you're going to kind of be leading this. But
something that I didn't see coming out in a lot
of the extracts before we got the book is her childhood. Like,
(07:47):
I mean, I knew she was a NAPO baby, but
I didn't think I knew how.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
Much of a silver spoon she had.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yes, she did grow up very, very wealthy. So her
father was film producer Bruce Paltrow. Her mother was an
actress blithe Danna, who was meant to be when she
started out like the biggest movie start in the world.
Like she was reading out Meryl's Street for roles, which
is so interesting looking at where Gwyneth ended up. She
hated the fame and like the glare of publicity, and
she hated doing press junkets, so she kind of moved
(08:18):
away from that. And what's interesting is that when Gwyneth
was young, she would be asked if she wanted to
be an actress like her mother, and she would say, no,
I want to be a movie star like Meryl Streep.
So she kind of did want that fame from early on.
Can I just say At the start of the book
starts with like her parents' backstories and how they found fame,
and how they fell in love working on a play
together and their backstory. It goes into Gwenneth being born
(08:39):
and then follows her all the way to present day.
My biggest takeaway from the start of the book is
that Gwyneth Paltrow as a teenager terrifying. I'm having nightmares
about this girl and ever coming across her and having
to deal with her.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
The bit that I got through was that first bit,
because that's a bit that fascinates me the most, and
the bit where she was like with someone asked her
if she thought she was going to be famous.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
She's like, no, I know, I am.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Yes, but that even like, yes, she grew up rich,
she grew up around a lot of privilege. She grew
up acting in these like very specialized you know, summer
camp programs with her parents where other people had to
come in audition. But if you were the child of someone,
like they weren't even hiding their nepotism. If you were
the child of someone, you progressed through the acting camp
system and all these sorts of things. And because she
(09:24):
was so beautiful and got away with everything and had
this charmed life, Like when she was in high school,
she was smoking like a pack of cigarettes a day,
which she did all the way through her twenties. I
was like, I know she's super happy now, but I'm like,
how is that woman still standing? And her dad was
friends with Madonna, So when she was in high school,
Madonna wrote her a letter and was like, hey, Gwyneth,
like cool girls live longer and they don't smoke. And
(09:46):
Gwenneth took it to school and like presented it to
the class, framed it, put in her bedroom and kept smoking.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Like that's the kind of life she was living.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
And then she went through like some weird kleptomaniac phase
which she was stealing. She was a.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Yeah, when she was a kid, she would steal stuff,
which again a lot of kids do.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
I'm pretty sure I did. Actually I had a lot of.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Weird things where I'm like, I was reading Gwen's life
and thinking that this is actually mirrors back to me,
which is weird.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
One time I stole lollipop from our local corner store.
I came home, my mom and dad found it. They
drove me back up to the corner store. I was
in tears at this point, walked me in and made
me return it and apologized profusely for taking it, and
then I never took anything again.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Well, I don't think Gwenne's had quite that reaction, because
when her parents came in for her stealing, they were
just like, oh, you know, she's got a younger brother.
Now she's not feeling a center of attention. And her
dad was like, oh sure, be okay.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
The biggest thing I think that really shaped Gweneth as
a woman is the daddy's girl of it all.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Yes, there's a lot of that throughout the book, which
is something she's spoken about so much. Both her parents'
stories come into those first few chapters of the book,
like there's her mum moving them all to like a
completely different state so they could attend like a nicer school,
and her dad being like very worried that she wasn't
very smart in school, and like what was going to
happen to her and all these sorts of things, and
also him like forbidding her from going out and smoking,
(11:11):
going out to parties all night, going to raise dating
these boys. Like she was like quite a wild child
as a teenager, which doesn't fit with her kind of persona. Now.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
She's still friends a lot of her high school friends,
so they wouldn't be interviewed for the book really except
to give like a few little platitudes here and there.
But other girls at school would talk about, like her
first day.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
At this really fancy prep school, she came in this
outfit that she had selected and it kind of didn't
hit the mark. The cool girls didn't want to be
friends with her, so she slipped out after school and
came back in this like really cool outfit. So she
went home and like completely redid her image and came
back and the cool girls accepted her, and they talked
about the girl on the striped shirt who they weren't
(11:49):
sure about, and that was her, But she had remade
herself like in one afternoon to be accepted, and then
she kind of took over and became their leader. And
like she would freeze different people out and she was like.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
Moving would have bullied me, God.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
She would have. She wouldn't even looked of my direction,
which are kind of made me feel in a safer
zone of like these mind games that she would play
with her friends.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
But this is kind of the best effort of the
Australian school system and like the English school system where
everyone has to wear school uniforms.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Oh one hundred percent, because there is none of that,
like everybody has to wear the same thing.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
Sure, some girls are gonna hike.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Their skirts up a little bit or tape of things
in or I used to roll my sleeves up which was.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
Very much not allowed, or leave my top button under one.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
I feel like it's a bit of an equalizer, whereas
in American schools it's so much more obvious.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Yeah, exactly, especially I guess like everyone at this particular
school was like very wealthy and came from these different backgrounds,
so like there was that level playing field there. But
Gwyneth kind of like ascended to be the queen bee,
and apart from like deciding who was in and who
was out and sometimes isolating people, she also just had
this thing where she like didn't care. Like there's this
story that one of her classmates tells about them standing
(12:59):
in the locker room putting their swimmers on.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
To go and dope.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
And all the girls hated this like green swimsuit they
had to wear. It was really unflattering and they hated
putting them on. But Gwyneth loved putting hers on because
she would just like put it on because she was
so beautiful. And she said that she looked over this
other girl who she wasn't friends with, and looked her
up and down, like stared at her in the eye
and then said, isn't it interesting how everyone's body is different? Oh,
and then like walked away, and this girl is like,
(13:24):
I still think about it to this day. I don't
want to paint this like you because again I've read
the whole book now, don't want to paint this like
Gwyneth is evil, because there's a lot of lovely stuff
in there about her. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
I think that that comes from being so spoilt rotten
by your father. Yeah, and he really did. And her
brother Jake was kind of ignored. He's still in the industry,
he's around. But I think Gwyneth was very much the
golden child, like Bruce took her to Paris for you know,
(13:57):
I want to be the one to take you to Paris.
I want to be the one to give you everything.
And I think she was really spoiled in that moment.
And I'm not saying that people don't grow up and change,
but that is such a crux of her her upbringing.
Is that confidence that she received at a very early age.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Yes, yes, absolutely, And as she said, like I've read
the whole book now and there's not any big, huge,
scandalous reveals that we kind of already didn't know about
her life, which I think is what a lot of
people wanted. But what I think is all like the
little stories that are sprinkled through about these big moments
that were like maybe public but just hadn't been told before.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
But yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
As she became a movie star, she was very much
like not wanting to be famous. It's like she went
to her mother's way for a little bit where she
wanted to be a really serious actress. She was chasing
down these very serious roles. People would say. She would
come on to set like very prepared, but also like
what you're saying of like coming from this like privileged
world that she would say like she wanted to sit
in the assistant director's chair while she was watching her
(14:57):
mother do a scene, so he just had to move
and he went outside and was like, that's my chair,
but they just had to do it. Also in the book,
it's linked to like you don't wanted to find her
by her romances, these big public stories that she's had,
but they are kind of bookmarks of her career. And
she said in so many interviews which I hadn't kind
of picked up before, is that she thinks that she
actually has become famous over time for her romance is
(15:20):
not her roles, which I thought was interesting because when
I look back, I never see Gwyneth Paltrow as like
someone who's been defined by a boyfriend, but she kind
of was for twenty years.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Well, I mean, yeah, I see that. I know she
won the Oscar and she's obviously been in a lot
of movies, but I do tend to agree with that
a little bit. It's almost like it kind of reminds
me of, you know, you're Elizabeth Hurley in your Vesace
dress with Hugh Grant, like that was her moment and
(15:49):
I feel like Gwenos with Brad, with Ben Affleck like
that kind of Each time she dated someone more famous,
it escalated her career more and more and more.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Yes, in the book, it talks about the fact that
she was trying out for all these roles and she
kept losing to like Julia Ormond or other actresses the
time who were be a bit more prevalent than her.
But she did a screen test with Brad Pitt for
Legends of the fall Man Great Chemistry, so he was
the one who wanted her on seven. Obviously she was
already an actress. That kind of catapulted her to fame
in a different way because she and Brad became this
(16:24):
kind of duo where she would do a lot more
like it's talked about in the book that she would
go and do a lot more pressed because people wanted
her to talk about Brad, and because she was so young,
she would just give all these details about their relationship
and they would go and pose together, and she would
bring him to an event and things like that, not
kind of realizing how intense the whole thing was. It's
(16:44):
kind of interesting because she was only twenty two and
he was like thirty three. When he proposed to her,
and in the book it's like it comes out of nowhere.
Then they had this kind of back and forth over
their age gap, which I feel is like we kind
of thought they broke up because she thought he was
like not in her league, which comes out in the
book as well, but it also is a thing of
(17:05):
like he was in his thirties, he was ready to
settle down and have kids, and she was like kind
of just starting her career.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Yeah, And I think, particularly in that era, the woman
as the handbag was very prevalent, like where Gwyneth was
is and was particularly back then, the most stunning woman.
So having a person like that on your arm is
going to immediately elevate your career too. And I'm sure
(17:31):
she took advantage of that, but it doesn't negate the
work and the success that she's had since then. But
do we hear anything else because I didn't get to
these chapters. Do we hear anything else about the later
loves of her life, particularly Chris Martin?
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Yes? And actually it's so interesting how it's, you know,
how kind of like we thought when Taylor so released her,
Albert was going to be all about Joe Olwen because
they'd been together for ages, but it was mostly about
Manny Healy because he's the one that kind of stuck
in her world a bit more. I feel like, for
Gwyneth Paltrow, that's Ben Affleck and kind of kind of
realize how tumultuous their relationship was.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
I guess she kept it more.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Like there's quotes from Ben Athwick saying they would go
to events and people would say can we take a
photo of you together, and that he would say no, sorry,
Gwenneth said no, Like Gwenna said no to this, like
she was the one who was kind of calling the shots.
And I kind of understand that because there's these stories
of like how intense the fandom around her and Brad
Pitt was, not just from the press but from the public,
(18:30):
that they would just get followed everywhere by fans who
were obsessed with them being together. And there's this one
story in the book where they were traveling and so
they were in this hotel. They had security guards outside
and the throng of people outside, the fans who found
out that they're kept growing and growing growing, and then
this one woman like scale the fence and snuck into
the hotel and like got into their room and all
(18:51):
of a sudden, like it's just like Brad Pitt and
Gonneth Paltrow in this room, and this young woman appears
and everyone starts screaming and security comes in. And if
this story is true, it made me like Gwyneth Paltrow
because apparently she was obviously quite shocked because there was
a stranger in her hotel room with Brad, but then
she clocked that it was a teenage girl and the
secure girl but like grabbing her and pulling her, and
(19:12):
so apparently Grunna like ran across the room and like
pull the security guards off the young girl and was
like shielding her and trying to protect her and being
like she's not trying to hurt her, she's not crazy,
she's just like she's so young, like she didn't know
what she was doing. I'm sure the girl like got
into the hotel and was like, shit, I didn't think
this is gonna happen.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
What do I do now?
Speaker 1 (19:28):
And so I think that level of fame for them
kind of made her keep her bent athletic relationship out
of oppress, like to an extent.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
I love that, and I think that That's probably one
of the things that not that this is ever an
option for me, but that level of fame is so
terrifying because you just like people can be a little
and you don't know whether it is I think teenage
girls is one thing, but you don't know whether it
is an obsessive stalker like murdery vibe, or it's just
(19:59):
someone who is so in love with you and thinks
they know you and thinks that they have a relationship
with you and like a teenage girl. So I really
I do respect that she kind of took that and
said let's just all take a breath here, because I
think the initial reaction would be take her down, get
her out, we need safety. But I think when as
(20:22):
seeing past that and going, oh, she's just a girl
who loves Brad.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Yeah, and look at the time, didn't we all Yeah,
it's not interesting when she talks about meaning Ben athlete,
it was kind of this idea that she'd finally met
someone who was her equal, which is kind of interesting
because I always think of Ben Affleck as like more
of that kind of like he talks about growing up
on the streets of Boston and like this rough upbringing
and like being in high school and him and Matt
Damon like hatching plans to be famous and all this
(20:47):
sort of stuff. But when Gwyneth Paltro met him, and
I guess this kind of is probably true, she was like,
he grew up in Cambridge, he came from all educated background.
He knew about the things, he knew about literature, he
knew about worldly things. And after having to like train
Brad Pitt and Caviat and all these sorts of things.
And there's also this story where she had organized for
her and Brad Pitt to go visit like these beautiful
(21:08):
spots in Russia and stuff, and he was late. He
missed the like deadline for them to go in, and
so she was just I think she hated Brad Pitts.
So reading between the lines, she hated Brad Pitt so
much in their last year of being gaming.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
I get it, And I think, like classicism and you know,
difference in the way that you were brought up, I
completely understand that.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
It just gives me the egg a little bit.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
I mean, I don't know, like it's just I understand it, though,
I do understand it. When you're brought up in a
certain way, and someone doesn't follow the rules that have
become innate in you, you don't even have to think
about them anymore.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
I just love this idea of like seeing like Gwanavan
and Brad Pitt being like the hottest couple in the
world and everyone's obsessed with them. They're planning this big
wedding and her being like, I just hate being alone
with you is just so funny. But she was obsessed
with ben Affleck. She met him, she thought he was
the smartest person that she'd met. And the other thing
is he thought she was the smartest woman he'd ever
dated at that time. And she talks about like as
(22:08):
much as he kind of ignored her a lot. And
it's like he's playing really hot and cold with her,
Like ben Affleck in his like twenties and thirties, working
at a level that is like quite intense with his
dating life.
Speaker 4 (22:18):
I'm going it does a surprise me. Yeah, Nan, But
what about Chris Martin. I want to know a little
bit more about the cold Play years.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
That's an interesting one because she went back and forth.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
I mean, she obviously dated lots of other people, but
ben Affleck was kind of her like other big public romance,
they broke up, they got back together. She called him
to do a movie with her because she was like,
that's where our relationship is right now, like the intensity
of them kind of. And I think they actually broke
up and got back together more than we even know
in the public eye kind of from the book is
that they just kept trying to make it work because
(22:49):
they were so drawn to each other. And she says
so many times how good the sex was, over and
over again, like that's the one thing that she wants
on the record. She met Chris Martin kind of, I
mean obviously that they were together for a long time
and they had two kids together, and she talks about
like motherhood stripping her ambition for a while, but also
that he was just like this really safe landing space
(23:10):
for her after her father died, because that was a
huge trauma in her life and she was feeling like
very burned by the industry and just wanting this safe
place and Chris Martin kind of was that for her.
It's also interesting how much she saw her divorce from
him as a failure, which is something I didn't really
know about her as much. So in the book, they
get into like the whole group situation, which is also
(23:32):
interesting because her wellness addiction. I thought always from this
idea of her wanting to like look a certain way,
because you know, she says she said publicly, and she
said through the book as well that looking unhealthy, being overweight,
looking tired are her like biggest kind of fears that
she has. But in the early days of starting her
(23:53):
Wellness Empiring group, she told like her close family and friends,
that cancer had taken everything from her, had taken her
loved ones. She lived with this really intense fear. She
talks about like hosting this lunch in her backyard and
feeling her hand going numb and getting a headache and
thinking that she was dying, and hearing her kids play
in the yard and thinking, what if I got so
sick I couldn't look after them. And afterwards the doctor
(24:15):
was like, it wasn't a stroke. It was probably like
a bit of a migraine accentuated by a panic attack.
But she then went on this whole big thing where
she went to all these different gurus and helped people
and doctors, like looking for something to like make her
never think that she was going to die again. And
so I think the whole group thing is very linked
at this like fear she has of dying or being
unwell or someone in her life being unwell. So she
(24:37):
turned to all these like alternative medicines and was like,
if I just eat this and I drink this, then
I'll live forever and so will my family.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
And look, she's not the first person to do this.
You know, Eastern medicine has been around for thousands of years.
We know that.
Speaker 4 (24:49):
But you know, those were the.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Bait hitting stories, you know, the vaginal steaming and the
lots of vagina stuff and vagina candles and I mean
all of that stuff, you know, was so tied up
in her brand and so baity. But she has really
built an empire and before a lot of other people
(25:12):
jumped onto that train in terms of commercializing it.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Which again, so it's like throughout the book it because
they've interviewed so many different people, they talk about her
wanting to like monetize it and make all this money
and everything like that, but it's also just yeah, was
linked to this idea of her also wanting to build
a business. And it's kind of interesting because the story
that she tells publicly is this whole thing of like
she didn't know only know what she was doing and
she had to google like business phrases under the table,
(25:41):
whereas behind the scenes people were saying that she is
a lot more involved and a lot more like not
that she knew what she was doing, but she's kind
of like was trying to be the boss behind the
scenes in a really intense way. There's not that much
stuff in there also in the book about like her
Like there's obviously like behind the scenes of parties and stuff,
but it's more her like kind of granular life around
kind of like yeah, building her business or being a mother,
(26:03):
or like how she reacted to scandals. But there are
a few stories and how we talked about the Madonna story,
how there was that story around how her friendship with
Madonna broke up and that made headlines when the excerpts
from the book came out. There's also a story there
about how she and Minnie Driver stopped being friends. Oh yeah,
and also the Wanona writer stuff like the Merry Driver
and Ben Affleck weren't they in Yeah, So this is
(26:24):
kind of what I was interested in. Again, she's got
a lot of her same friends that she's had since
primary school. So I'm not saying that she's like a
bad person she can't keep friends, but I think there
was such a spotlight on the years over her romantic
relationship with stars, but also these big celeb friendships. So
in the book they say that like it was that
holiday that Madonna like invited her cell phone, came to dinner,
screamed at her daughter, and Chris Martin's like, we're never
(26:45):
seeing her again.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
She's toxic.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
So even though Gwyneth had been like friends with her
since she was a child and she was kind of
like a godmother to her, that relationship ended. And then
the Warnona Writer thing ended over the Shakespeare in Love script,
which the book says that Gwyneth was offered she barely
read the script because she had just done Emma and
she had actually put Warnona Writer's name forward from it.
(27:08):
This is the only part of the book I fel
like gwen It's involved in She was like I want
this rumor crush and she's somehow like planted this, and
then the movie came around to her.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
Again and she took it.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
So there was no way that she was trying to
take Wanona write her down is her official story, but
in the book so Yes, Mini Driver had been cast
in Goodwill Hunting, which was Ben Affleck and Matt Damon's
big move. First move they worked on won an oscar.
This huge story of these like two young guys from
Boston making this incredible movie. On the movie, Matt Damon
and Minnie Driver started dating. They were together for a while,
(27:39):
so it was just like Fourceim in Hollywood. It was
Matt and Minnie and then Ben and Gwen, great couple names.
And then after a while Matt started to want to
break up with Mini Driver. And apparently I would love
Mini Driver's take on this, because apparently Gwenneth hated her.
She called her an air kiss friend. And one of
the interesting things from the book is that if Gwenneth
doesn't like someone, she makes a vomit face behind them
(28:01):
when they talk.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
Is that not the.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
It's like it's brought up in the early years when
she's in her twenties, and I was like, maybe that's
something she did her twenties. Her. I'm so scared of her.
I just never want to be around her, and I
also love her. It's so weird in the and then
at the end of the book, they're talking about her
being a meetings for people in group not doing things
that she doesn't like, and how she would kind of
push people out and they would come and resign and
she'd be like, oh you're leaving, Oh no bye kind
(28:27):
of thing, and then as soon as they lead, they're like,
Gwyneth would do her signature vomit face, and I was like, what,
She's still doing that in her fifties, which is honestly
iconic behavior. So apparently she would call Mini Driver an
air kiss friend, like someone that she would air kiss
but would never engage with, and would make the vomit
face behind her every time she talk.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Okay, So I just want to clarify because I feel
like we've been quite scathy. Is Amy O'Dell telling a
true story on this? Is this a takedown?
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Like?
Speaker 4 (28:56):
Is this an honest representation?
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Very fair. I didn't end the book disliking Gwyneth. I
left finished the book terrified of her, But I also
finished the book like she's just an interesting person. Absolutely,
But it was so funny because like in the Mini
Driver part, the point where he broke up, where she
broke up with Matt Damon was kind of orchestrated by
Gwyneth because Matt wanted to break up with her, and
so Minnie left the house that day and came back,
(29:19):
and so she got mugged. So Matt had comforted her
and gens like, she's lying, she didn't get mugged, and
like then made ben Affleck agree with her. And then
the next day she said she got mugged again, and
Courtne's like, sorry, absolutely lying, and then that relationship broke down.
They've never spoken since, And I just kind of think
it's funny that there's this line from like that behavior
(29:41):
through to kind of like the end behavior of her now.
But the book finishes on this note where it's like
she's married now to Brad Foulchek. Apparently they're very happy.
There was an insinuation that she was with Brad at
the same time she broke up with Chris Muttin. But
it's really interesting because that's the time where Amy O'Dell
jumps in and says, I couldn't find anyone to verify
that rumor.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Okay, So because I feel like we're gonna run out
of time.
Speaker 4 (30:05):
Out of five jade eggs.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
What do you give the Gwyneth Paltrow biography.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Look maybe four four if you're already interested in her
to a certain extent. If you're not interested in her,
you won't care about this book. If there's an interest
in her in some way.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
This is a good read.
Speaker 4 (30:23):
Okay, I'm definitely going to read it. I'm going to
finish it.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
I've only been sort of skimming it, and I just
didn't want you to give away everything. But there's so
many great stories in there. I definitely want to know
more about Chris. And yeah, absolutely fascinating and well done
Laura for power reading this book and the Gwyneth biography
is available now, and yeah, tell us.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
Your thoughts well.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Thank you so much for listening to this Spill today,
and a very special thank you to Laura for her
deep dive into Gwyneth's biography. Do not forget to follow
this Spill on Instagram and TikTok, and also make sure
you check out Morning Tea which is at eight am
and then you'll see us at three pm. This bill
is produced by Manisha Iswarren with production by Scott Stronik.
Speaker 4 (31:12):
Bye Bye, Love h
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.