Speaking with her husband on a new podcast, Paltrow also opens up about her marriage to Falchuk and the early move they made after tying the knot that she now regrets.
Gwyneth Paltrow is getting real about the rocky road to becoming a stepmom, and the misstep she and Brad Falchuk made at the start of their marriage.
On Tuesday’s episode of The goop Podcast, the actress and her TV producer husband opened up about blending their families, admitting the transition wasn’t exactly seamless.
“One thing we did that was maybe a little bit different was, we got married and then didn’t move in together for a year,” Falchuk confessed. “Would you have done the same thing this time? Again?”
“I don’t think so,” Paltrow admitted. “I mean, I think at the time, we really felt like we were doing the right thing. We were trying to kind of land the plane very, very gently and slowly and get everybody on board. But I’m not sure that it didn’t just prolong that thing of like, we don’t know what we’re doing.”
Looking back, Falchuk added, “Yeah, I think that’s right. I think it just gives the kids too much power … to actually keep these two adults from living together? I think it made them more uncomfortable and more like, ‘Okay, this is not something that is solid.'”
The couple, who tied the knot in 2018, share four children between them: Paltrow’s daughter Apple, 21, and son Moses, 19, whom she shares with ex Chris Martin, and Falchuk’s daughter Izzy, 21, and son Brody, 18, whom he shares with ex Suzanne Bukinik.
Paltrow admitted that early on, her relationship with Izzy was complicated.
“It’s funny when I look back … we traversed through some really rough, rough things,” she said. “One of my most profound lessons that I learned from my relationship with your daughter, which is now so fantastic, is that I think there was a testing going on. She was testing me all the time to see at what point I would reject her.”
The Iron Man star said she eventually realized the only way forward was to fully embrace what she called “the essence of maternal.”
Paltrow explained, “I really landed on this kind of image or metaphor of the sun … incredibly warm and casting off light and sunshine, ray of light, and doesn’t need anything back in order to be it.”
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“That’s what I thought Izzy needed from me,” she continued. “I was just going to be that presence for her, always loving and forgiving … show her that ultimately I was so there for her that she would not question my intentions or think that I was there to take you away from her.”
Despite the “rough” beginnings, Paltrow said she’s grateful for the lessons that came out of those challenges.
“As cheesy as it sounds, love really is always the answer pretty much,” Paltrow shared. “Intellectualizing or bartering or compromising, in air quotes … if you can ascend to the point where you love and forgive all the time, that’s sort of the ideal state. And I’m so incredibly grateful to your kids for that. I feel like they really helped me understand what the point of all this is.”
Today, the actress and her stepdaughter have found solid ground, with Paltrow celebrating Izzy’s 21st birthday earlier this month with a sweet message: “Happy birthday my snizzle. You have taught me so much about love. I am lucky to be your stepmom.”
