Gwyneth Paltrow has revealed she and her ex-husband Chris Martin committed to professional therapy and weekly family brunches to remain a family following their divorce.
Speaking on the Friends Keep Secrets podcast with host Benny Blanco, the 53-year-old Marty Supreme actress explained the origins of the viral term conscious uncoupling and how she and the Coldplay frontman sought expert guidance to ease the transition for their children.
Paltrow, an Oscar-winning American actress known for her roles in Shakespeare in Love and the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Iron Man, married English musician Martin in 2003. Martin, 49, is the lead singer and co-founder of the British rock band Coldplay, which achieved global success with hit songs including Yellow. The couple share two children, daughter Apple, 22, and son Moses, 20, before ending their decade-long marriage in 2014.
Before deciding how to approach their separation, Paltrow reached out to friends who grew up in divorced households to understand their most painful experiences. She asked them to share what caused the deepest lasting scars from their childhoods.
"I talked to all my friends who came from a divorced household and I said, 'Tell me what was the worst thing? Like, what do you feel you have scars from to this day?'" Paltrow recalled.
Paltrow was surprised to learn that the hardest part for her friends was not the initial split, but growing up amid persistent friction between parents that endured for years. Friends described fathers dropping them off at the end of the driveway, tense birthday parties, and parents refusing to eat in the same room until college graduation.
Determined to avoid that outcome, the Iron Man star wanted her children to grow up in an environment where everyone could sit at the same table during major milestones. Paltrow and Martin consulted a therapist to help guide their split.
"So Chris and I had this therapist that was really brilliant, and he sort of introduced us to the concept and we just made a commitment to really put the kids first," Paltrow said. "What that meant was to stay a family even though we weren't a couple."
Family brunches and porch truce
After relocating from London to Los Angeles, the former couple established a regular routine of having brunch together as a family of four every Sunday. However, the Goop founder admitted that maintaining the routine was not always easy.
Paltrow recalled one specific Sunday when she felt the family gathering "might go really off the rails" as tension began to build between her and Martin.
"It was getting tense and we looked at each other and we went outside on the front porch and we're like, 'Let's just not. Let's just, you know, let's just not,'" she said. "We just hugged and we were like, 'Okay,' fist bumped and then we went to brunch."
The phrase conscious uncoupling quickly caused a public sensation when Paltrow and Martin announced their split in 2014. Paltrow revealed that the intense media reaction had negative repercussions for her acting career shortly after the announcement.
Speaking to Amy Poehler on her Good Hang podcast earlier this year, Paltrow said she was fired from a film project due to the public backlash surrounding the phrase.
"I was supposed to do a movie at one point and it was like right after the conscious uncoupling thing with Chris, and there was a lot of harsh stuff in the press," Paltrow told Poehler. "I think the distributor was like, this might be too hot to touch. So that was great because I was getting a divorce and then I got fired. So it was so awesome."
Origin of the Goop candle
Elsewhere on the Friends Keep Secrets podcast, Paltrow shared the story behind one of her lifestyle brand's most talked-about products, the "This Smells Like My Vagina" candle.
Paltrow launched her wellness and lifestyle brand Goop in 2008. The company began as a weekly email newsletter providing fashion, health, and lifestyle advice before expanding into a major retail enterprise selling beauty products, clothing, and home goods.
Paltrow explained that her unusual preference for scents led to the creation of the candle. She noted that she prefers woodsy and leathery smells, adding that Goop's first fragrance, named Church, was incense-inspired.
While working with perfumer Douglas Little on an earthy fragrance featuring notes of tomato leaves and seaweed, Paltrow made a humorous offhand comment about a sample.
"So I have a very bawdy sense of humor, and nobody really knows that side of me," Paltrow said. "And I said to him, 'Well, this one smells like my vagina.' As a joke."
Little took the comment seriously and crafted a commercial product named "This Smells Like My Vagina." Paltrow's product development team subsequently decided to buy into the concept.
In 2020, Goop released the product in collaboration with artisanal fragrance company Heretic, pricing the candle at $75. The product contained a blend of citrusy bergamot, geranium, Damask rose, cedar absolutes, and ambrette seed.
Paltrow clarified on the podcast that despite the headline-grabbing name, the candle "definitely did not smell like my vagina."
Although the $75 candle sold out immediately upon release, Goop chose to discontinue it after three years on the market. Paltrow said the item became such a large public spectacle that it began distracting from the rest of the company's work.
