Here is Gwyneth Paltrow yesterday in the Hamptons, hosting a screening of Despicable Me 3 to kick off a run of movie-related sh*t at goop MRKT (sidebar: the way goop punctuates drives me nuts). What does goop sell for the movies? Gluten-free candy, definitely. Minion-themed children’s yoga mats? Probably. Another question is why the tie-in is with Despicable Me 3, a movie Gwyneth Paltrow is not in, and not Spider-Man: Homecoming, a movie in which she has a role. Is it because she doesn’t want to directly acknowledge she’s still an actress? She’s a tech start-up wunderkind now, so maybe she doesn’t want to remind everyone that she still occasionally appears in movies.
Remember that? Remember how I told you she would be in Spider-Man? Well, she is. (Lainey: I begged Sarah to gloat about this and since she hasn’t, not really, I’m doing it for her. Back in March, Sarah was the first and only to report that GP would be in Spider-Man. And for months we’ve been getting messages and tweets all like, “are you sure?” Or, “Just admit you were wrong!” Not wrong.) Pepperony lives, which is probably the only reason Lainey will end up seeing Spider-Man. And it’s not just Lainey—there is a surprisingly devoted Pepperony fandom out there, and we heard from them for a few months before Paltrow’s return was confirmed. But the movie opens tomorrow, and Paltrow’s in it, and so I guess we’re all holding hands in a flower circle now. (Flower circles—definitely something goop will sell.)
entire cast list filled out for #SpiderManHomecoming and @GwynethPaltrow name added&might owe @LaineyGossip apology which will happily give
— Nancy O (@nancyozz) June 23, 2017
But I wouldn’t count on seeing Pepper Potts much after Spider-Man. Sony footed the bill for her appearance in this movie, Marvel itself remains unmoved on the topic of salary. As they learned with Civil War, they can invoke Pepper without needing her to actually show up, and I bet they keep finding ways to do that. Which probably suits Paltrow just fine, as she would like us to forget she was every anything so gauche as an actress, and only remember her as a start-up genius and wellness guru. But would anyone care about goop if Gwyneth Paltrow was just a Hamptons socialite hawking vitamins and magic rocks? I think we all know the answer to that.
