The Truth About Martha Stewart And Gwyneth Paltrow's Iconic Feud
Over the years, Martha Stewart has made it abundantly clear that her title as "domestic goddess" isn't to be contested; her unending line of feuds with everyone from Rachael Ray (via Gossip Cop) to Antoni Porowski (via W Magazine) is testimony. However, her one-sided rivalry with Gwyneth Paltrow manages to stay relevant — possibly because it's been spanning a decade.
We can trace the pettiness to Stewart's passive-aggressive comment in a 2013 interview with Bloomberg Television, when asked about Gwyneth's lifestyle venture Goop: "I haven't eaten at Gwyneth's house and I don't know how she lives, but if she's authentic, all the better. I certainly hope she is" (via Us Magazine).
However, she quickly dropped the "passive" and delivered a memorable onslaught to Paltrow when she was profiled by Net-a-Porter's magazine in 2014, "She just needs to be quiet. She's a movie star. If she were confident in her acting, she wouldn't be trying to be Martha Stewart," she sniped (via Page Six).
The rivalry between Martha and Gwyneth is one-sided
Later in that year, the business mogul took it a step further, publishing a Thanksgiving piece titled "Conscious Coupling," an unmissable dig at Gwyneth Paltrow's announcement that she and her ex-husband Chris Martin were going to "consciously uncouple" (via People).
The article on Martha Stewart Living went on to innocuously pair ingredients, leaving the allusion to the divorce as a palate cleanser: "Every Thanksgiving table should be blessed with the presence of a long-married pair who bring out the best in each other, are completely enamored despite their differences, and leave every other guest thinking, I'll have what they're having."
A quick fast-forward to 2020, and Paltrow still lives in Martha Stewart's head rent-free. In an appearance on "Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen," Stewart gave her take on Paltrow's best-selling, vagina-smelling candle: "I'm sure it sold out," Stewart told Cohen. "She [Gwyneth] does that kind of irritatingly — she's trying to zhuzh up the public to listen to her and that's great. Let her do her thing." She also declared: "I wouldn't buy that candle."
Gwyneth Paltrow's participation in the feud has remained limited; the Oscar-winning actor addressed the trivial comments at Fortune's "Most Powerful Women Summit" in 2014: "No one has ever said anything bad about me before, so I'm shocked and devastated," she joked. "I'll try to recover."
Nevertheless, after giving us almost a decade's worth of internet drama, we think it's time for them to consciously uncouple.