#67: I am compelled to defend Gwyneth Paltrow
Death By Consumption
8/12/25 - 8/18/25
Okay, bear with me but I need to do that obnoxious thing people do and ask for Japan recommendations. We pounced on a last-minute flight deal and are going later this year for Justin's 40th, so I have to quickly plan a bunch of shit!!! I've been to Tokyo a few times over the last few years (a gay guy going to Tokyo? groundbreaking), but only for quick stopovers, so the last time I spent any substantial time in Japan was nearly 20 years ago. So I have to assume my knowledge is extremely outdated........ (back in MY day, we had to navigate confusing Japanese cities with a map from Lonely Planet, made by an underpaid travel writer who had almost certainly never even visited Japan).
It's always so annoying when people do the "send me recommendations!" travel thing on social media, but if I can't get good recommendations then, I ask you, what even is the point of having a newsletter? So, reply with anything you've loved there, please and thank you.
This week, I got my hackles up about the new Gwyneth Paltrow biography, I started two new sci-fi series, and I cried at an episode of Survivor. What else is new!
Gwyneth, by Amy Odell (2025) — hardcover
15 years ago, I started The Danny & Gwyneth Project, in which I was attempting to Julie & Julia my way through Gwyneth’s first cookbook. Born out of boredom and depression after a bad breakup, the project quickly became the bane of my existence, as I would spend hours of time and hundreds of dollars trying to track down impossible-to-find, outrageously expensive ingredients. Proving that Gwyneth remains one of the most bankable stars in the world, my random little blog got a lot of attention quickly — the project was written up by online news sources (and, randomly, a Delaware newspaper), and after the first week I started getting thousands of daily visitors. Turns out if you write about Gwyneth, they will come. For a brief, hilarious moment, Gwyneth’s own publishers featured Danny & Gwyneth on their homepage, only to delete it within 48 hours, presumably once they actually took the time to read it and realized I wasn’t exactly complimentary toward the cookbook (which famously encouraged you to "speak to your local fishmonger," but also featured a recipe for PB&J sandwiches; conceptually, the book was very confusing).
Through the Danny & Gwyneth experience, I discovered how the mere mention of Gwyneth makes people go rabid. My inbox filled with vitriol and gleeful outpourings of hate, with people assuming that, since I was making fun of some of the things she does, surely I must hate her like they do. Some of the absurdly overblown responses I got horrified me, to be honest, and made me feel weird about what I was doing. Of course I was laughing at her — her recipes earnestly encouraged you to build a wood-burning pizza oven! — but I didn’t hate her. Far from it! I found her charmingly campy, and delightfully unaware of herself, which was refreshing in the 2010s, a time when celebrities were learning how to harness social media to polish their images and control their narratives. But Gynweth went against that trend, and kept stepping on rakes everywhere she turned. And the more insane things she said, the more I was charmed by her.
The project ultimately fizzled out once I moved to NY and, frankly, got less depressed (though I did briefly bring it back during the pandemic — like Frodo’s ring, Danny & Gwyneth whispers to me when I’m at my most emotionally vulnerable). But I genuinely got so much out of it, more than I ever expected: following her cookbook pushed me to do things in the kitchen I hadn’t ever done before that now are regular parts of my cooking, like making fresh pasta or breaking down a chicken; I still make her veggie chili recipe every winter, that shit slaps, as the kids say; and I know more than a few of you are reading this very email because of that original, long-ago blog. Gwyneth has, in a weird way, given me a lot in life, and when I think of her I can’t help but think of her fondly, like a long-lost family member who’s deeply unwell but always good for a laugh.
Which is why Amy Odell’s new, unauthorized biography of Gwyneth felt like a seismic publishing moment. Finally: a peek behind the curtain of my twisted twin flame! I wanted scandal, I wanted gossip, and I wanted, hopefully, some real insights into her life and often-baffling thought processes. Did I get all that? Kind of! But mostly: no!
Unfortunately, author Amy Odell falls into the same trap we all do when talking about Gwyneth — she can’t help but let her own feelings take over. For whatever reason, Gywneth turns regular people into emotional basket cases (I’m not immune from this! As evidenced by me, here, writing paragraphs and paragraphs about my parasocial relationship with a woman who certainly doesn't know I exist...). While there are many, many things Gwyneth has said and done to invite valid ridicule, the book feels like a 300-page airing of grievances, one in which Amy finds any excuse to criticize literally anything Gwyneth has done in her life. It's... getting a little weird!
Don’t get me wrong, obviously Gwyneth deserves criticism. Most notable on her list of offenses is her massive impact in boosting anti-science, vaccine-skeptic voices (you could plausibly argue that without Gwyneth, we don’t get RFK Jr.). And, yes, she does seem like a bit of an entitled brat, to the point where her father, before he passed away, reportedly took her aside and cautioned her that she was becoming "an asshole." But there are more than a few instances in the book that had me raising an eyebrow at Amy, and what her motive was in writing this book. For instance, this anecdote:
When Gwyneth, Matt Damon, and Jude Law were to depart from the Berlin Film Festival, where they’d appeared on a private jet, producers of the film wanted a ride also. But the three actors insisted on those seats going to their friends, leaving the producers to fly commercial.
Oh no! Won't somebody think of the producers!!!! Producers, flying commercial?! The horror! I’m so glad that they survived their ordeal, and are able to get revenge via off-the-record statements. What’s even stranger about this anecdote is it comes in the middle of a section about how Gwyneth had, in the words of her old school friend, “gone Hollywood” — but isn’t kicking producers off your plane to make room for a friend the exact opposite of going Hollywood?
A lot of the book’s most gossipy sections seem to have relied on interviews with her old classmates from Spence, a wealthy all-girls private school in Manhattan, who clearly carry a lot of resentment that Gwyneth surpassed them all. These women are presented simply as old classmates left in the dust by their cold and callous former friend, though it’s never mentioned that these "girls" are practically all extremely wealthy heirs to massive fortunes, most of them the daughters of finance zillionaires — it's reasonable to guess that the majority of them have always been and will always be richer than Gwyneth. So, while it is fun to read the personal snipings from rich bitches trying to take down their most famous former friend, this is not exactly a group I find even slightly sympathetic (or, for that matter, reliable sources).
Almost every person interviewed for the book seems to have had some sort of falling-out with Gwyneth, which means every single source has an ulterior motive, a reason to try to smear her name, which Amy never discloses. We spend pages and pages hearing about Gwyneth's terrible behavior on various sets, only to learn that the source for most of these stories was a Miramax producer she had a falling-out with. It's so weird he didn't have anything positive to say!
We even, for some reason, hear from an actress who had a bit part in Emma, who had one of her two lines cut after Gwyneth suggested a script change. “Imagine this for people who are starting out,” the actress complains. “You’ve got two lines, and someone cuts fifty percent of your script, it’s heartbreaking.” Of course that does suck, but it seems highly unlikely that Gwyneth suggested the script change specifically to fuck with this random woman, as she's implying. There are pages and pages and pages of complaints like this, to the point where I started to wonder if Gwyneth had backed up over Amy Odell's dog. I picked up the book, of course, specifically to read stuff like this, but the sheer volume of truly petty complaints (people at Goop complain that she emails on the weekends, which... welcome to having a shitty boss! Is this really a book-worthy complaint?) starts to feel almost unfair to Gwyneth.
I know it's ridiculous, of course, to say that an author is treating Gwyneth fucking Paltrow unfairly, but this is what always happens with her: people go so overboard in their vitriol and disgust, criticizing literally every breath she takes, that it undercuts the genuine and valid critiques there are to make about her. The more time you spend complaining that she sells $2,000 shirts, the less attention is focused on the fact, say, that she actively continued to platform and enrich a "doctor" who pushed a woman to take vitamin C for a painful breast lump, who then, of course, died of breast cancer. There are a zillion horrifying parts like that to the Gwyneth story, but, as always, it's buried under an avalanche of "she sold a candle that smells like a vagina? Ew!" Okay, sure, but can we maybe focus on the part where her advice is literally killing people??? Burying the genuinely dangerous things she's been a part of under an avalanche of complaints like, "She was mean to a sommelier once!" makes all the criticism much easier for Gwyneth to dismiss or ignore completely.
It seems like no one who actually likes Gwyneth would talk to Amy. (Which is probably by design — as we learn in the book, when Vanity Fair was writing an article on Gwyneth, she emailed all her contacts: “Vanity Fair is threatening to put me on the cover of their magazine. If you are asked for quotes or comments, please decline. Also, I recommend you never do this magazine again.” It feels safe to assume she sent a similar email about cooperating with this book.) (Also, it's very funny that someone leaked that email.) So, I do think that that colored a lot of Amy's reporting, whether or not she wanted it to. When the only sources you can get are negative sources, your book is going to be negative! But after literally hundreds of pages of anonymous bitching about one woman's entire life, it starts to feel exhausting. I'm sure these people all feel like they got their big revenge on her, but it just makes them feel just as petty and gross as they're accusing her of being. Grow up! (I'm just kidding: I never want rich people to grow up, and in fact I need them all to be airing each other's dirty laundry more often!)
This isn’t to say the book isn’t fun — it very much is. The gossip we get is delicious and genuinely scandalous, like the revelation that Gwyneth loved when Ben Affleck would teabag her. (!!!!) Or the way she reportedly cheated on Brad Pitt, rejected his marriage proposal, shattered his heart, and then told friends at a dinner party, “He’s dumber than a sack of shit.” (Get him again, Gwyneth!) Or, my absolutely favorite anecdote, about Gwyneth’s sad attempt to make the crew of Me, Myself & Irene like her:
Renée Zellweger joined the Me, Myself & Irene cast and crew at a skating party. Jim Carrey … threw the Irene crew a dance party on a boat. Gwyneth ordered an ice cream cart for the set and had her assistant push it around saying, “It’s from Gwyneth, it’s from Gwyneth.”
But the weirdest part of the book is how dry it is. At times, it feels like you’re reading a Wikipedia summary of her life and career. The only moments of humor come from Gwyneth herself, who always pops up with the perfect quip designed to drive people completely insane. Like her classic line: “I would rather die than let my kid eat Cup-a-Soup”, or the iconic lesson she learned after wearing a fat suit for Shallow Hal: “I got a real sense of what it would be like to be that overweight, and every pretty girl should be forced to do that.” Every pretty girl!!!! Intentionally or not, Gwyneth remains the world's most powerful and gifted troll.
This book ultimately falls into the trap that so many of these biographies do: the best stuff is excerpted in the media, and anyone who spends $30 and reads the whole thing is left with whatever already publicly available facts the author could cram in, to pad out her page count. Which is actually very GOOP-coded, now that I think of it: I spent a good amount of money on something that, ultimately, proved to be pretty worthless.
Alien: Earth, season 1, episodes 1-2 — on Hulu
When a movie turns into a TV show, it always feels so... classless. It should only ever go the other way around! When a TV show turns into a movie, that's chic and vintage — Mulder and Scully, on the big screen?! How glamorous! But when the process is reversed, and a big-budget Hollywood spectacle is chopped up with commercial breaks and episodic cliffhangers, it all becomes a bit embarrassing. Like seeing your teacher working their summer job at a hot dog stand. Neither of us want to be here, and I'm sorry we have to meet like this.
That said Alien: Earth at least has a certain strangeness to it that makes it earn its place as a little bit more than another Marvel-esque franchise-expanding moneygrab. Which is to say: they sure use a lot of dissolve transitions! That's how you know we're dealing with an artiste, not just a regular TV director. The first two episodes take the familiar Alien framework (deep-space research vessel, evil corporation, suspicious robots, aliens) and throw a bunch of extra shit into the mix — namely, killer robots with the implanted brains of human children. It's all a bit weird, which is always appealing to me, although the whole "putting kids' brains into adult bodies" means there are far too many scenes featuring adult actors pretending to be kids, which feels like watching an improv show. To see grown men giggling and sticking their tongues out... it's very uncomfortable and I hate it. But I'm enjoying the show enough, I suppose, and it is late August, so, honestly, who cares.
Silo, season 1 – on Apple TV+
I don't know what got into me this week, but clearly some animalistic urge to watch new scifi shows has awoken. Silo isn't necessarily a good show, but it contains a somewhat compelling mystery that, unfortunately, keeps me watching. I hate a show that relies almost exclusively on "keep watching to find out the truth!" and yet here I am, suckered into it once again. I'm essentially watching Silo to learn what is going on in this stupid little futuristic world, but also to enjoy Rebecca Ferguson, a deeply strange actress who I find myself drawn to in a nearly inexplicable, quasi-religious way. Also, Common is in this, and he's not bad! Proud of him.
Australian Survivor: Australia vs. The World, episodes 1-2 — streamed via nefarious means
Not content with taking over every cafe and breakfast spot in Brooklyn, 10 years ago Australia also decided to challenge America for Survivor franchise dominance. Every year, those dastardly Aussies produce a season of some of the most compelling, charming, ruthless, and gorgeous Survivor players the world has ever seen, with it all hosted by one of the hottest, most muscular and pure-hearted men alive, Jonathan LaPaglia, affectionately known as JLP. (Who was shamefully fired by the network last month, reportedly for budget cuts, launching an online outrage cycle that still shows no signs of stopping. Bring back JLP!)
This year, they've upped the stakes and produced a 10-episode series in which 7 former Australian Survivor contestants face off against a team of "The World," consisting of 3 American Survivor legends, plus some randoms from other countries (who knew Finland even had television, let alone Survivor players!).
Five minutes into the premiere episode, I was crying, watching my forever Survivor queens Parvati and Cirie reuniting on a beach for the first time in almost 20 years. The last time we saw these two incredibly powerful women team up to dominate men like this, George W. Bush was president and I was still "straight". This has been, to put it lightly, a long time coming!
Nearly every second of this show is a fever dream for Survivor fans, but beyond the fan service, it's just thrilling watching 14 people who all instinctually know how to make great TV. The prize is laughable to these people ($250,000 Australian dollars, which is just over $150K US — this is a show in which contestants have already won millions and millions of dollars on other shows), which means they're all here "for the glory," another way of saying: they're all fighting for screen time, a recipe that only benefits us, the viewers.
It's hard to describe to a non-Survivor fan just how massive this season is (unlike next year's Survivor 50, there's no Mike White playing to create headlines for non-Survivor fans), and honestly it feels a little strange for an Australian network to be airing what is, essentially, a free gift to worldwide Survivor fans. The show seems to get terrible ratings in Australia, with the majority of its viewers and online attention coming from people around the world like me, who find ways to stream it via illegal workarounds and janky unofficial streaming sites. And yet, I am eternally grateful to whatever executive destroyed his own bottom line to produce this series — you probably immolated your own career, but went out giving Survivor fans one of the greatest gifts we've ever received. The show is a sprint, not a marathon, airing 10 perfect episodes over the span of 3 quick weeks, and I might need to check into some sort of Survivor rehab to help me with withdrawals once it's all over.