Gwyneth sounds bothered

Gwyneth Paltrow is the November 2025 British Vogue cover star. GP covers magazines all the time, this is not remarkable. What is remarkable is that this particular magazine cover at this time is for an acting project. The film is Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme, and there will definitely be an Oscar campaign behind it, so there is a possibility that Gwyneth will be a part of Marty’s award season run. Those of you who are exasperated by her might have to brace yourselves for a lot of GP in the coming months. Not only could there be a lot of Oscar talk, but given Timothée Chalamet’s popularity and how viral he always is, and how viral Gwyneth also always is, their scenes in the movie are about to explode all over social media during the holidays. 

There’s a quote related to Timmy in the Vogue interview that’s already making some noise, when she talks about when they first met. In the most Gwyneth way possible – claiming she wasn’t all that familiar with him beforehand, LOL. 

“To wit: she had minimal knowledge of Chalamet when she signed on. “I first met him at the costume test. I was asking him questions, trying to get to know him,” she recalls. The rise of Timmy passed you by? “I know!” she says, laughing. “Everyone makes fun of me because I don’t know anything. I was like, ‘Do you have a girlfriend?’ And he was like, ‘I do.’ He mentioned that she had kids and I was like, ‘That’s so cool. I really love to hear that [from] a young man like you.’ I understand a 45-year-old who has his own kids going out with a woman with kids, but it’s a cool choice to go out with a young woman who has two kids. I respect it. I think it’s kind of punk rock. But my point is I didn’t know [it was] Kylie Jenner…”

Like I said, on brand for GP. To not know someone, to not trade in the gossip about celebrities because she’s better, and too busy, and her own life is too fascinating for her to have bandwidth for anyone else. 

But this also works cunningly in her favour too. Because the segment of Timmy’s fanbase that doesn’t f-ck with Kylie, that hates that he’s with her, now has a new champion. And that’s a good segue into a reminder that even though the part of the internet that hates and criticises Gwyneth is much louder, it is pointed out in the Vogue piece that there’s a difference between how older millennials and gen X feel about her in comparison to how gen Z feels. Apparently women in their early 20s are obsessed. For a generation raised on Instagram, Kardashians, and Housewives, that’s the lens through which they see Gwyneth. That’s also a generation that may be unfamiliar with her as a serious actor, knowing her more as an influencer. So when you consider that they’re about to see her for the first non-Marvel time playing opposite the most famous actor in their age group, the fascination with her will likely only increase…along with her signature smugness. 

And somehow Gwyneth couldn’t find that smugness when the subject of Amy Odell’s biography about her came up. I would have expected her to shrug it off, to turn it into yet another mark of superiority – after all, being profiled in a whole book by the same person who bio-ed Anna Wintour, to be considered compelling enough to warrant all that research over hundreds of pages, should have been a point of lazy pride. Where is the nonchalance? 

Instead, GP admits that while she didn’t read it, her husband did. And then goes on to fire a direct shot at Amy. This isn’t even shade, because there’s no subtlety. After calling the book unserious and untrue, Gwyneth attributes it to sexism. 

“I think it’s very sexist. I was like, ‘OK, hang on a sec. Why do the men get Walter Isaacson and I get this hack?’ You know?”

Very uncharacteristic for Gwyneth to be bothered and to show it. Also she just told on herself. Walter Isaacson? Who has studied Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, and Steve Jobs among others? These are figures who have been and will be talked about for centuries – is this the impact that Gwyneth believes she will have on… what, exactly? 

Well, as Amy Odell points out in her book about Gwyneth, she is a key player in the rise of wellness, and/or the commodification of wellness, to the detriment of actual wellness. As the lifestyle stream has exploded, wellness has become a privilege, not a human right, and the rest have become more unwell. So if Gwyneth is really to live on in name a hundred years from now, it will be in infamy. Is that what she’s looking for? 

This may be what touched a nerve. Because there are a lot of people -  many of whom are close to her – who cooperated with Amy for the book. She wasn’t just hitting up the paparazzi and tabloid editors. There is no way that GP didn’t know that the book was being written, and it’s not improbable to consider that she may have initially given her blessing…only to realise that Amy’s portrait was unflattering to her legacy in a much more alarming way than whatever tea was spilled in the Anna Wintour biography. 

It's no wonder then that Gwyneth has over the last couple of years turned down the volume on wellness to a dog whistle and instead getting louder about fashion. She recently rebranded her label to lean more towards luxury basics and this is happening concurrently with her return as an actor in a prestige film. Easily. And here is where Gwyneth is more recognisable in her attitude. 

In my previous post to this one posted earlier today, I wrote about Victoria Beckham, how hard she tries, and connected her to Jennifer Lopez, also a hustler, also a woman who keeps trying to please people who will never be pleased by her. With Victoria, it’s fashion. With JLo it’s the acting community. And then here’s Gwyneth Paltrow, who stepped away from acting by choice (and, believe me, it was a choice – I know we are all trying to make ourselves feel better by pretending that there would have been no opportunities for Gwyneth even if she’d wanted to act but this is wishful thinking) and then was pursued for a role in a film by an emerging auteur director for a cult favourite studio… just like that. And her reaction to it? Her relationship with this skill called acting? Basically a shrug. 

“I’m good at it. I enjoy certain parts of it,” she says of acting. “It’s very much part of the story of who I am, but I don’t daydream about it. I don’t fantasise about what role I haven’t played yet.” She cocks her head in thought. “I don’t know why.” 

Imagine being that cavalier and then there’s JLo right now making headlines on Howard Stern about being ignored and dismissed by the acting elites and talking about the roles she’s been offered but turned down – and regrets (Unfaithful). But it’s JLo who’s laughed at all over TikTok with millions and millions and millions of views. 

This is the kind of messaging that can f-ck us all up. Are we supposed to want it bad enough to keep trying or are we supposed to exalt those who don’t have to try because they’ll always have a head start and want for nothing? 

I’m so annoyed by this that I can’t even properly enjoy the styling of this Vogue feature which is pretty much the answer to the question: what would Margo Tenenbaum look like in 2025? 

We're Squawking Gwyneth today. Join us! (App link here)

 

Click here for more on Gwyneth in British Vogue.