Gwyneth Paltrow is now admitting she had “toxic people” working for her at her wellness company, Goop.
Responding to some of the claims made in Amy Odell’s “Gwyneth” biography, Paltrow told Vogue UK on Tuesday, “That bothers me. ‘Oh, Goop has a toxic culture.’ That drives me insane because we have never had that.”
However, the brand’s founder and CEO quickly added, “Granted, we’ve had a couple of toxic people, and because of my fear of confrontation, maybe I didn’t deal with it quickly enough.”
She confessed that that toxicity did “cascade down,” and she took total “responsibility for that.”
Aside from the few bad apples, the actress, 53, insisted that Goop has “such a good culture.”
“It’s something that I am so proud of and worked so hard on and –” she explained before pausing to reflect on what she was saying.
“Of course I’m going to say, ‘It’s not a toxic culture,’” she told the interviewer, who noted that people have different experiences.
“Of course! We are all human beings who go to work, sometimes with unresolved stuff, and that comes out. People can have bad work experiences anywhere,” she argued.
Still, the Oscar winner can “guarantee” that her business is made up of “really engaged, really brilliant, highly collaborative teams who are excited.”
For her unauthorized biography, which hit bookshelves in July, Odell interviewed over 200 people, not including Paltrow.
After gathering her information, Odell determined that Paltrow allegedly ran “a chaotic and sometimes toxic office culture” that led to a high turnover rate, The Independent reported at the time.
Employees felt overworked and underpaid, describing their boss as “erratic” and “childish” while calling out her alleged “impatience and perfectionism.”
One former staffer even said they “never felt less well in [their] life than during [their] time there,” USA Today previously reported, citing the book.
