A podcast clip’s caption reads: “WTF is going on with Gwyneth Paltrow?”
It seems to encapsulate the resounding response to some of the A-lister’s recent, shall we say, questionable decisions.
If you’ve managed to miss the latest furore surrounding the Hollywood actor turned purveyor of all things “wellness”, a swift recap: first off, Paltrow was accused of platforming an arms dealer at the start of the month after she opted to host Trae Stephens, co-founder of the AI defence company Anduril, on her Goop podcast.
Next, her appearance in an advert flogging luxury penthouse apartments in Israel caused a stir after going viral over the weekend. The ad for the 51 Park residential development in the city of Herzliya, northern Israel, sees her wake up in a swish high-rise flat and do some stretches, before waxing lyrical to a taxi driver about how, “There’s a reason the most iconic buildings are built by a park”.
The ensuing backlash has been swift and savage. Both moves have given rise to a lethal combination of censure and p*ss-taking online; one video parodying the real estate commercial on social media sees actor Hannah Pilkes impersonate Paltrow as she twirls around New York, with a voiceover that includes the immortal lines, “I love fracking in Central Park, blood diamonds in Saks Fifth Avenue!”
It is, on the face of it, the mother of all public relations disasters – the kind of epic fail that requires months of painstaking professional “reputation management” to slowly undo the damage. A report published by Amnesty International just last week accused Israel of deliberately presiding over a campaign of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. The timing of Paltrow’s choice to lend her face and name to selling high-end Israeli homes amid the ongoing conflict has earned the damning moniker of “Gwynocide” from some corners of the internet.
The whole thing is particularly sensitive given that Melisron, the parent company behind 51 Park, also owns a commercial real estate project in the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, located within the occupied West Bank. It was constructed on land previously inhabited by Bedouin communities; most were forcibly displaced by the Israeli government.
The most high-profile take-down thus far has come courtesy of Colin Firth’s ex-wife, Livia Firth, who called the star’s behaviour “disgusting” and “unacceptable”.
“How detached are you from reality? You’re either so detached that you need to be cancelled, because you live in another world, or you’re actually a really, really nasty person,” Livia said in an impassioned Instagram video. “Or you are stupid. Which are you, Gwyneth Paltrow?”
She added that Paltrow’s planned upcoming trip to Quintosapore, the sustainable farm in Italy that Firth runs with her two brothers, had been cancelled.
The real question is, why has Paltrow voluntarily thrown herself face-first into what was always going to be a PR s***-storm? One could simply put it down to pro-Israel sympathies; Paltrow’s late father was Jewish, as is her husband. Yet she’s also an incredibly shrewd and savvy businesswoman, having managed to effortlessly pivot from movie-making to wellness influencing and turn her lifestyle brand, Goop, into an empire worth an estimated $430m. So surely she can’t be doing it for the money.
The Iron Man star knows optics better than most of us know our times tables. If she’s playing with fire, is it because she doesn’t think she’s capable of getting burnt?
You’re either so detached that you need to be cancelled, because you live in another world, or you’re actually a really, really nasty person
Livia Firth
Paltrow is no stranger to controversy, of course. This is the woman who famously encouraged women to shove jade eggs up their nether regions and publicly endorsed candles that smell of vagina. She has always known how to flirt with provocation while staying just the right side of the court of public opinion.
What she is most certainly not is the kind of woman who makes accidental snafus, the kind of woman who unintentionally messes up by misreading the social temperature of the room. Though one could be forgiven for assuming her usually astute instincts have simply failed her this time, I can’t help but suspect it’s far more likely that these latest media “mistakes” are anything but – that Paltrow knew exactly what kind of reaction she’d get, and did it anyway.
Once, during a Harvard Business School lecture about Goop’s multiple viral brouhahas over the years, Paltrow uttered a particularly telling statement: “I can monetise those eyeballs.” A 2018 New York Times profile put it this way: “Goop had learned to do a special kind of dark art: to corral the vitriol of the internet and the ever-present shall we call it cultural ambivalence about GP herself and turn them into cash.”
In other words, Paltrow has become a master at spinning online outrage into gold while somehow staying as neutral as a piece of Swiss cheese. Perhaps she thought she could do the same again? If so, she almost certainly miscalculated how emotionally and politically charged the issues involved are.
Or perhaps there’s method to her madness, and this is simply the latest high-risk strategy to stay ahead of the cultural curve. As the US progressive non-profit magazine Mother Jones posited after Paltrow’s podcast interview with Stephens: “The ease with which Paltrow and Stephens traded thoughts on light and darkness elides the morally questionable convergence of woo-woo, hippie aesthetics and the Silicon Valley defense-tech universe. It comes amid a larger rightward turn in both Silicon Valley and American wellness culture, perhaps best exemplified by the rise of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.”
Who knows? If Paltrow’s chilling knack for being able to gauge and monetise the way the wind is blowing has indeed remained intact, this latest tone-deaf PR “blunder” could actually be a cold and calculated next step on her continuing path to world domination...
