Most of my favorite Gwyneth Paltrow quotes emerge when she’s forced to confront the reality that she hasn’t tried all of the questionable products sold through her lifestyle entity Goop. Today, I found a few new favorites in a genre that can only be described as “Gwyneth Paltrow doesn’t understand.”
While talking to the press at the Netflix headquarters in Los Angeles recently, Paltrow addressed coverage of her original series the goop lab. She said, according to Variety:
“I will never understand the level of fascination and projection. But we don’t want to not change the conversation just to please everybody. We do what we do in total integrity, and we love what we do. It doesn’t even matter, really, that some are trying to get attention for writing about us.”
The “why are they talking about me?” defense comes after she dropped a new television series on a major streaming service for everyone to watch. After explaining the integrity required to peddle expensive, pseudo-scientific products, Paltrow added that media is dying anyway:
“That kind of media, a lot of it is dying. The business model is failing, and they’re turning to the tabloidization to get the clicks. So it works, when they write about me, apparently. Because they keep doing,” she said. Paltrow added she would be open to the criticism “if it was something I could learn from.”
I’d say the obvious lesson is that coverage of Goop and all its enterprises most often stems not from clickbait but from a desire and responsibility to point out the absurdity of its bad science practices. There’s been plenty of constructive criticism of what happens to be a newsworthy company run by a celebrity.