Gwyneth Paltrow is on the latest episode of Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast. I don’t listen to this pod regularly but I do know about it because I work with people who subscribe and because Alex gets a lot of high profile celebrities on her show. She’s basically Howard Stern for Millennials and Gen Z, not just because of her famous guests but because of what she asks her famous guests. Just like it is with Howard, celebrities will allow during their interviews with Alex questions they wouldn’t ever allow during an interview with anyone else. 

 

Which brings us back to Gwyneth. Gwyneth is on Call Her Daddy to promote herself, obviously, but she’s also there because her daughter, Apple, is a huge fan of Alex Cooper. This is made clear off the top – that it was Apple who convinced Gwyneth to do it… and so Gwyneth came to play. Alex wanted the gossip, and Gwyneth gave it up. 

For those of us who were around and paying attention in the 90s then, this is major gossip gold, this is gossip nostalgia, everything we wanted to know about Gwyneth, specifically her love life. Because as Alex tells GP, “You have the most stacked roster”, referring to her romantic resumé. Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck, Chris Martin, Luke Wilson, she was rumoured to have dated or at least hooked up with Prince Felipe, now the King of Spain, and as she tells Alex, those are just the people we know about, hinting that there are other famous lovers on her “roster” but she’s managed to keep them secret. 

 

What’s going viral right now is the part of the conversation where Alex asks GP to compare Brad Pitt and Ben Affleck and specifically what it was like having sex with them. Here’s the clip: 

“Technically excellent”! 

So now we know Ben Affleck has some all-star moves. And he had them in his 20s which is when they were together. Presumably those skills would have … um… improved? It’s a win for both Brad and Ben, although Ben loses later on when they play F-ck, Marry, Kill with Brad, Ben, and Chris Martin. 

 

This isn’t just sex though – Alex also asks Gwyneth about how she and Brad fell in love, how he proposed, why she broke up with him... Basically all the questions that gossips back in the 90s wanted to ask and are probably still curious about. This, after all, is legacy gossip. 

I’m not here to fangirl Gwyneth (anymore) but it’s undeniable that in that era, she was The Girl. She and Brad Pitt were The Couple. And she knows it. As annoying as that is, and she is super f-cking annoying and at times dangerous with her messaging and an entitled white woman who is clueless about her privilege – all of the things – it’s also why Gwyneth is still a story. Because she knows how to manipulate the culture. 

 

This is Gwyneth showing off. She’s flexing. After all, how many people, even in Hollywood, have experienced what she’s experienced? She has an Oscar. She has the MCU. She’s had all the big houses, all around the world, from London to Los Angeles. The Movie Star, the Other Movie Star, the Rock Star, the Award Winning Producer, and the Iron Man… they all fell in love with her, they all wanted to marry her, and now she’s the one out here just casually telling the tale – but on a podcast, FFS, she’s not even saving it for the memoir where she can monetise it… because she doesn’t have to! 

GP is in her 50s now. The age when they say women have no f-cks to give. Still insufferable? No doubt. But she’s not the one suffering, that’s what makes it sting for the rest of us.