Craig Barritt/Getty Images for Fast CompanyIf she only knew then what she knows now! Gwyneth Paltrow brought "conscious uncoupling" to the public consciousness when she and Coldplay's Chris Martin announced their plans to divorce in a March 2014 Goop blog post.
Yahoo's Katie Couric interviewed Paltrow and Lisa Gersh, CEO of Goop, at the Fast Company Innovation Festival in New York City Tuesday, and the Academy Award winner admitted she still can't believe the impact her breakup news had online. "Even if you look back at the time my husband and I were separating and the philosophy of 'conscious uncoupling,' we broke the f--king internet," the 43-year-old Iron Man 3 star said. "When you look back, you think, 'This is kind of a good thing to talk about. What if you break up in a way you could remain a family even though you're not a couple?'"
Paltrow is the kind of person who learns from her mistakes.
As an example, she said Goop learned a lot from how it handled her separation from Martin. "We did it in an inelegant way and we didn't give it enough content at the time," she admitted. "I'm really glad that happened because maybe it brings up there was a better way to do that." Still, Paltrow said she considers all press good press for Goop. "In a media company, it's good when people are talking about your content. We believe in positivity and promoting," she said.
Couric also asked Paltrow if she's ever had a non-Goop moment, to which the actress replied, "I do. I have un-Goop moments all the time—but I don't think it's un-Goop. Like, I'm very forthcoming about my proclivity for martinis and a cigarette at a party once in a while, and french fries, and cheese. I feel like life is about a balance and I don't think you can live an ascetic life of, you know, seaweed and air and brown rice. I believe in food and sex and alcohol and laughing, but I also believe in trying to achieve what it is that you can while you're here—and I think it's kind of an aim, it's a motivation as opposed to, like, a strict set of rules to live by."
Paltrow also revealed that Goop is getting into the book business. "It's called Goop Press. One book a year will be from Goop," she said. "The rest from people we work [with]."
In regard to other celebrity-driven brands that have launched in recent years, like Jessica Alba's The Honest Company and Reese Witherspoon's Draper James, Paltrow said, "Jessica and Reese are friends of mine...I think it's wonderful. We're living in such an exciting time where women feel that they have the capability and the permission to expand and to go into different areas. It's wonderful to see women feeling entrepreneurial and bullish about what they can bring to the market and to the culture." Paltrow doesn't worry about what Alba or Witherspoon are doing, she explained, because her mother, actress Blythe Danner, "really raised me not to be competitive. I remember when I was first starting acting, feeling competitive: 'Oh no, if I don't get this part, that's it.' My mother told me there's really a piece of the pie for everybody, and you just need to focus on what you're doing, you need to work hard, and don't look to the side because you know you want everybody to do well. I think we all are doing very different things, we all are focused on different markets and so I think it's great and we help each other."
Unsurprisingly, Gersh shares Paltrow's point of view regarding Alba and Witherspoon's business ventures. "I think you look at businesses that are being launched, I know they're associated with celebrity, but they're really associated with a set of values," she told Couric. "A brand is a set of values, so you look at Gwyneth's values [and] everyone understood what that was. They understood the aesthetic, whether it was the conditioner for your hair, whatever it was. You understood what those sets of values were. You look at Reese [and] everyone understands it's a Southern sensibility; everyone associates with that."