Oscar-winning actress turned lifestyle guru Gwyneth Paltrow is famous for walking some of life’s more unconventional paths, particularly when it comes to her relationships—yet even she is happy to admit when those unique roads result in more bumps than she might have liked.
Case in point, her decision to live separately from her husband, Brad Falchuk, for a year after they tied the knot, an arrangement that the couple made in an attempt to make the blending of their respective families easier on their children.
While their hearts might have been in the right places at the time, Paltrow, 52, and Falchuk, 54, who wed in 2018, now concede that their plan to mitigate any upheaval in their kids’ lives may actually have done more harm than good.
The “Shakespeare in Love” starlet and her spouse opened up about their marital regret during a recent episode of Paltrow’s “The Goop Podcast,” after Falchuk asked if she would change things about the way they set up their families during the first 12 months of marriage.
Paltrow, who shares two children with her ex-husband, Chris Martin—Apple, 21, and Moses, 19—and Falchuk, who has a daughter, Izzy, 21, and son, Brody, 18, with his ex-spouse, Suzanne Bukinik, were both in agreement that they would alter one key aspect of their relationship if they had a chance to redo things.
“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. … Would you have done the same thing this time? Again?” Falchuk asked his wife.
“I don’t think so. I mean, I think at the time, we really felt like we were doing the right thing,” Paltrow responded. “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.’ What do you think?”
Her husband agreed that, despite having good intentions, the couple’s choice to wait before merging their households was not the right way of doing things, explaining that he believed prioritizing their kids in that kind of way gave the youngsters “too much power.”
Falchuk added that, not only did their separate living arrangement give their kids undue influence over their lives, it also ended up making the situation more “uncomfortable” for their offspring—noting that he believes it left their children in doubt about whether the relationship would last.
“I think them having agency is really important,” he went on. “But power, to actually keep these two adults from living together? I think it made them more uncomfortable and more like, ‘OK, this is not something that is solid.'”
When Paltrow and Falchuk wed in 2018—tying the knot at the actress’s stunning Hamptons mansion—both were living in the Los Angeles area with their respective children, with the on-screen star still residing in a stunning Brentwood home she had purchased with her former spouse.
Patrow and Martin bought the property for $9.95 million in 2012, less than two years before the duo “consciously uncoupled” and ended their marriage.
However, the Goop founder held on to the picture-perfect, eight-bedroom, 11-bathroom abode following their divorce and retained the home even after she wed Falchuk, continuing to use it as the primary residence for herself and her children.
In 2019, Paltrow revealed that she and Falchuk had finally moved in together—although she neglected to reveal which of their properties they were using as their marital home.
However, by 2022, the happily married couple had relocated again, this time to a stunning custom-built, eco-friendly mansion in Montecito, which they spent around seven years building.
The “Avengers” star opened up about that home while showcasing its beautiful design in a 2022 Architectural Digest shoot, explaining at the time that she had formed a love of the area while spending two semesters studying at UC Santa Barbara.
“I’ve always gravitated toward Santa Barbara. Even when I was living in London, we’d take the kids there for holidays. It was our sweet gem of an escape in the U.S.,” she explained.
Paltrow began scouting for homes in the area in 2015, just one year after she split from Coldplay frontman Martin, and found a “teardown with tons of potential,” which she quickly “fell in love with.”
“It was like ‘Grey Gardens,” she said. “There were wild animals living there and swarms of bugs, but I fell in love with the land and the views.”
According to records, Paltrow and Falchuk paid $4.9 million for the property in 2016—and quickly proceeded to raze the existing home to the ground, making way for a sprawling “eco-friendly mansion” that took around seven years to complete.
The actress worked with Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch of Roman and Williams on the design of the property, having previously enlisted the duo to outfit her New York City apartment as well as Goop’s first-ever pop-up shop.
Paltrow described the aesthetic of her home as “a Parisian apartment set within an old European barn” in her AD interview; however, she also called attention to the many environmentally friendly aspects of its design, including its solar power system and its gray-water system.
In January of this year, she closed the chapter of her life in Brentwood once and for all by selling her former home for $22 million, having originally put it on the market for just under $30 million in May 2024.
It was reported by the Wall Street Journal that Paltrow made the decision to sell after becoming an empty nester; her youngest child, Moses, headed off to start his freshman year at Brown University in the fall of 2024, two years after his sister, Apple, began her studies at Vanderbilt.
Despite voicing her sadness at watching her children fly the nest, Paltrow now seems very much at home in her new abode, regularly showcasing the space on her social media accounts—where she even revealed in March that fellow Montecito resident Meghan Markle had paid a visit to the dwelling.