TERRY GROSS: Hello, and welcome to “Fresh Air.” My guest this week is the actress Gwyneth Paltrow. She’s been in the “Iron Man” movies, “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” “Emma,” “Sliding Doors,” and “Bounce,” which I watch every time Cameron Diaz and I have a sleepover. In 1998, she won an Oscar for “Shakespeare In Love.” She is also the founder of the life-style Web site GOOP, and, this week, she announced that she and the Coldplay frontman Chris Martin are “consciously uncoupling” after ten years of marriage. Gwyneth, welcome to “Fresh Air.”
GWYNETH PALTROW: Thank you, Terry. It’s always a pleasure to be here. Remind me that I have some Tracy Anderson DVDs and a few samples of Restorsea in my bag for you.
GROSS: Oh, thank you, thank you. I’ll try to put those to use. So, I gotta ask: Is conscious uncoupling anything like jazz?
PALTROW: You know what, Terry? I never thought about that, but it kind of is! Say I am a saxophone, and my estranged husband is a clar— Wait. You know, Terry, I think I’d like to be the clarinet. So I am the clarinet, and I have my solo for a while. My voice has to be heard, Terry. That is crucial. And then, of course, the saxophone wants its turn to speak, which is only fair, but it must wait for the clarinet to finish. And then the saxophone gets to have its turn. Of course, the clarinet has a more elegant, refined sound than the saxophone, and for that reason it might just organically end up taking a little more time.
GROSS: O.K., so what it sounds like is that conscious uncoupling is more comparable to free jazz than, say, bebop or swing. That’s very interesting. Is conscious uncoupling anything like really terrific opera?
PALTROW: No, Terry. In fact, I would say that conscious uncoupling is kind of the opposite, because really terrific opera is very dramatic, and conscious uncoupling …
GROSS: Is what? Poorly paced? Overtly experimental? Badly staged?
PALTROW: I was going to say that it seeks to be very undramatic.
GROSS: O.K. I wonder—could you maybe take, you know, like a typical scene from a break up and describe it as though it were an opera? And then, maybe, could you describe that same scene through the lens of conscious uncoupling? Could you … do you think you could maybe do that, for us?
PALTROW: O.K., so let’s say a couple is breaking up—this is the opera version—and the man is packing up his stuff. He might smash the vintage Louis Vuitton watch his wife bought him at a cute little flea market in the Eleventh Arrondissement. She might grab a first edition of “Nightwood” that he’s putting into a box and scream, “Like you ever even heard of Djuna Barnes before you met me!” He might, sarcastically, write her a check for $1152.73, which is exactly half the price of the La Spaziale Vivaldi II Espresso Machine he’s taking. Now, in conscious uncoupling, that man would say to his partner, “Do you think you could give me some emotional and physical space to pack up my things?” And she might just check in with herself. And then she might say yes.
GROSS: And what if she says no?
PALTROW: Well, then we might have a few minutes of that terrific opera, Terry.
GROSS: Oh! Invite me over for that! Particularly if Dolora Zajick plays you.
PALTROW: I think she might be a little old…
GROSS: What if I give her my Restorsea? And my Tracy Anderson videos?
PALTROW: I think you might be on to something, Terry.
GROSS: You’re good friends with Mario Batali, and you wrote a cookbook with him. I’m wondering what, if anything, he had to say about your conscious uncoupling?
PALTROW: You know, Mario and I, when we’re together, we are all about fun. So the night I told him, I cried a little. And then we rode around the Italian countryside in a convertible. Then we bought some fresh fish. And then we made a paella, and after my second glass of Tenuta dell’Ornellaia Masseto Toscana I said, “Mario, I feel like you need to consciously uncouple from those zippered vests you wear.” And we laughed. And the paella tasted more wonderful than ever that night. So fresh. So new.
GROSS: We’ll be back after the break.
Photograph: John Locher/Las Vegas Review-Journal/AP