A revealing new biography is making allegations about Gwyneth Paltrow’s allegedly “cold” treatment of Goop staff, including a message she reportedly sent about office toilet etiquette.
Amy Odell’s Gwyneth: The Biography alleges that the 52-year-old actress once apparently “found pee on a toilet seat at the office” and wasted no time in calling it out on a public Slack channel.
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“Someone tinkled,” Paltrow allegedly wrote to employees, according to Odell’s book. “Make sure to clean up after yourselves, I’d appreciate it.”
Odell goes into more detail about the alleged dynamics behind the scenes at Paltrow’s wellness company, which she founded in 2008 and still works there as CEO. Allegedly, many who “worked up the nerve to go into her office” allegedly experienced “impatience” and “attitude.” Odell writes, “If an employee replied to one of her emails with ‘thanks’ or ‘on it,’ she’d tell them not to send those emails, because they were a waste of time.”
Per the book, this hostile “dynamic was subtle but damaging” within the company. “Almost no one — Goop’s board included — was willing to tell her no,” Odell claims.
Goop has long faced criticisms for its dubious pseudoscience, expensive items, and “out of touch” marketing tactics. However, Odell writes that this was always part of the allure, noting that the brand was “an odd window into her world and what it was like to have that money, that privilege and that lifestyle.”
“I think part of the appeal of Goop’s wellness products and content was — I’ll get one step closer to Gwyneth’s beautiful life,” she wrote. “But you can’t buy Gwyneth’s life. You can’t buy that privilege.”
According to Odell, Paltrow has never been concerned about the backlash, and neither were “Goop’s board nor its investors.”
“This is what drove her to do the business. She thought, I’m going to research things, recommend things, and if you want to go traditional, go see your GP. That’s not what I’m going to do. I’m not going to tell you to get a checkup,” a former Goop executive told Odell in the book.
Paltrow shared her response to the many criticisms of Goop in a 2011 Harper’s Bazaar UK profile.
“There were a couple of times when I thought, ‘I’m just gonna stop doing it. People are so mean to me. I don’t want to do it,’” she shared, per New York Daily News. “But then I was like, ‘Who cares what some lame person out there says?’ I was in Italy once, and this old man came up to me and said, ‘I had the best time in Nashville because of Goop.’ And that is so worth it to me.”
Before you go, click here to see celebrities who’ve been accused of being rude to wait staff.
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