Gwyneth Paltrow Opened Up To Kelly Clarkson About Learning To Co-Parent After Her Divorce From Chris Martin
"We made a commitment early on to be a family, even though we weren't a couple."
Gwyneth Paltrow and Kelly Clarkson got candid this week in a conversation about divorce, remarriage, and co-parenting during an interview on Kelly's talk show.
During the Kelly Clarkson Show segment, Kelly asked Gwyneth about her second marriage to Brad Falchuk and wondered if it was difficult for her to move on after her divorce from Chris Martin.
"Coming from someone who's literally in the midst of a divorce, I can't even imagine [getting married] again," she told Gwyneth. "So that's amazing, that you found love, and you found the space and the vulnerability at that level to say yes, and to do it again. Was that hard for you?"
"Probably the hardest thing I've ever done," Gwyneth answered.
"Allowing myself to learn the lessons that I needed to learn from my divorce, and then being able to really do that work on myself, and then open myself up again," the Iron Man actor went on. "My husband — he requires that kind of presence and intimacy, and it was really hard for me."
The two went on to discuss co-parenting, with Kelly saying, "Divorce is hard on people, but it's hardest on the kids."
Gwyneth and Chris have two children — Apple, 16, and Moses, 14.
Meanwhile, Kelly shares 6-year-old River and 4-year-old Remington with her ex-husband, Brandon Blackstock. She was also stepmother to Brandon's two children from his previous marriage.
During a September episode of the Kelly Clarkson Show, Kelly said while she would be sharing her personal feelings on her divorce, she wouldn't be going into too much detail for the sake of the couple's children.
"Divorce is never easy," she said at the time. "And we're both from divorced families, so we know the best thing here is to protect our children and their little hearts."
As for Gwyneth's advice on the matter, she said she and her ex-husband "made a commitment early on to be a family, even though we weren't a couple."
"It sounds weird and impossible," Gwyneth said. "But we worked with a therapist, who was amazing at helping us communicate."
"Luckily, we both came from families that were strong, and our parents were still together," she went on. "We really did want the same things, and we wanted the divorce ideally to impact the kids as little as possible."
Gwyneth explained that, after her split, she "talked to a lot of children of divorce" and asked them how best to navigate co-parenting with an ex-husband.
"Everybody had the same thing, which was just, 'I wanted my parents to be friends and like each other,'" she said.
"We just tried to make a commitment to really stay close, and we've been able to do that," she went on. "It wasn't easy. I'm proud of us for having really stuck to it."
"Now it's many years, and so it's much easier now," Gwyneth added. "It's harder in the beginning, of course. But you just have to make a concerted effort to really think about what is best for the children in this moment, and you have to push your own reactivity down as best you can."
In an interview with Drew Barrymore in September last year, Gwyneth got brutally honest about her co-parenting experience, saying, "some days it's not as good as it looks."
"Chris and I committed to putting them first," she said at the time. "And that's harder than it looks."
"Some days you really don't wanna be with the person that you're getting divorced from," she went on. But, if you're committed to having family dinner, then you do it."
"You take a deep breath, you look the person in the eye, you remember your pact and you smile and you hug and you make a joke and you just recommit to this new relationship that you are trying to foster."
Watch Gwyneth Paltrow's Kelly Clarkson Show interview here:
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Ellie Bate is a celebrity reporter and talent coordinator at BuzzFeed UK and is based in London.
Contact Ellie Bate at eleanor.bate@buzzfeed.com.
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