Gwyneth Paltrow says she and her former husband, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, were committed to remaining a family after ending their marriage.
The 53-year-old Marty Supreme actress and 49-year-old musician made headlines in 2014 when they announced their split using the now-famous phrase “conscious uncoupling.”
Paltrow, who shares Apple, 22, and Moses, 20, with Martin, has now discussed where the viral expression came from—and how the former couple turned to professional guidance to make the separation as manageable as possible for their children.
During an appearance on Benny Blanco’s Friends Keep Secrets podcast, she explained that they carefully considered how to handle the divorce. “We really sat down and thought, like, is there a way that we could do this,” she said.
Paltrow also spoke to friends who had grown up with divorced parents, asking them what experiences had caused lasting emotional pain. “Tell me what was the worst thing? Like, what do you feel you have scars from to this day?” she recalled asking.
Their answers surprised her. The deepest wounds were not necessarily caused by the divorce itself, she said, but by years of tension and hostility between their parents.
Gwyneth Paltrow says she and ex-husband Chris Martin were determined to remain a family after their divorce
The Marty Supreme actress, 53, and Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, 49, sparked widespread attention in 2014 by describing their split as a “conscious uncoupling”
“They said the worst part was, like, my parents,” Paltrow said. “My dad used to drop me off at the end of the driveway. It was so tense at my birthday parties. They never ate dinner in the same room until my college graduation, and it caused me so much pain. So I was like, how could we not do that?”
The Iron Man star wanted her own children to experience family milestones without that same strain—ideally sitting together at one table, including after a graduation. To help make that possible, she and Martin sought advice from a therapist.
“Chris and I had this therapist who was really brilliant,” she said. “He sort of introduced us to the concept, and we just made a commitment to really put the kids first. What that meant was to stay a family even though we weren’t a couple.”
The Goop founder acknowledged that maintaining that relationship was not always effortless. After moving from London to Los Angeles, the former couple committed to a weekly Sunday brunch with their children, although one gathering came close to unraveling.
“It was getting tense and we looked at each other,” she recalled. The pair stepped onto the front porch and agreed to pause before things escalated. “We just hugged and we were like, ‘Okay,’ fist-bumped, and then we went to brunch,” Paltrow said.
Paltrow has previously said that the intense reaction to the phrase “conscious uncoupling” also affected her career, claiming she lost a film role in its aftermath.
Speaking to Amy Poehler on the Good Hang podcast earlier this year, she said the role came shortly after her split from Martin, when she was facing heavy criticism in the press.
“I think the distributor was like, this might be too hot to touch,” Paltrow recalled.
“So that was great because I was getting a divorce and then I got fired. So it was so awesome,” she added.
Elsewhere in her conversation with Blanco, Paltrow also revealed how her offbeat sense of humor inspired Goop’s best-known novelty product: the sold-out “This Smells Like My Vagina” candle.
“I like things that smell kind of unusual,” she said. “I like woodsy, leathery. Our first perfume is called Church; it’s incensy.”
Paltrow has now detailed the origins of the viral phrase and how she and the “Yellow” hitmaker sought expert advice to make their separation as smooth as possible for their children
The couple are parents to Apple, 22, and Moses, 20
The Oscar-winning actress went on to share that she was working on finding an ‘earthy’ fragrance with the perfumer Douglas Little, sorting through tomato leaves and seaweed.
She said that a sentence she meant to be simply humorous, turned into something Little thought was a ‘brilliant’ idea.
‘So I have a very bawdy sense of humor, and nobody really knows that side of me,’ she continued. ‘And I said to him, “Well, this one smells like my vagina.” As a joke.’
‘So he thought I was serious, and made a candle called “This Smells Like My Vagina,” and my team bought the candle.’
In 2020, Goop released the candle with the company Heretic.
It features citrusy bergamot, geranium, Damask rose, cedar absolutes and ambrette seed.
‘I thought I was joking and, anyway, the rest is history,’ she added on the podcast, clarifying for the record: ‘It definitely did not smell like my vagina’.
The $75 candle sold out immediately when it hit the market but the wellness company discontinued the product after three years.
‘It became such a big thing that we actually stopped selling it because it was distracting people from what we were doing,’ Gwyneth said.
