Gwyneth Paltrow has opened up about her friendship with her ex-husband Chris Martin’s girlfriend, Dakota Johnson.
The Goop founder, 51, spoke candidly about Johnson – who’s been dating Martin for over five years – during a Q&A session on her Instagram Story on 5 October. In her video, Paltrow went on to note that she and the Fifty Shades of Grey star have a close relationship.
“We’re actually very good friends,” she told her Instagram followers. “I love her so much. She’s an adorable, wonderful person.”
Johnson and Martin first started dating in 2017, three years after the Coldplay frontman and Paltrow announced their divorce. Before their split, the former couple welcomed two children: Apple, 19, and Moses. 17.
Over the years, Paltrow has continued to praise her ex-husband’s partner. In 2021, the Iron Man star – who married writer Brad Falchuk in 2018 – shared a black and white photo of Johnson on Instagram in honour of the actor’s birthday. “Happy 30th birthday to this absolute gem,” Paltrow wrote in the caption.
During an interview with Harper’s Bazaar in 2020, the entrepreneur doubled down on her appreciation for Johnson. She acknowledged that while people may think it’s strange that she’s pals with her ex’s partner, she doesn’t feel that way.
“I can see how it would seem weird because it’s sort of unconventional. But I think, in this case, just having passed through it iteratively, I just adore her,” she explained.
Speaking to the publication, Paltrow also explained how she and Martin “consciously uncoupled,” as they’ve continued to remain in each other’s lives as co-parents.
“It’s not like there’s a finish line: ‘Oh, we consciously uncoupled; we’re done.’ It’s a lifelong commitment to constantly reinvent your relationship with your ex, which you do presumably because you have children together,” she said. “I don’t see a reason to do it if you don’t have children together. Some people do.”
Paltrow acknowledged that while she and Martin put in “all the hard work in at the beginning,” when creating a stable relationship after the breakup, their dynamic has continued to evolve.
“I would say very rarely is it difficult now. We’ve learned how to communicate with each other. We love each other,” she added. “We laugh. We have the best of each other. It’s really nice. It makes you feel like you don’t have to lose.”
In April, Paltrow reflected on how her use of the phrase “conscious uncoupling” played into the “cultural shift” around her divorce. In an Instagram Q&A, she said that while she “definitely did not coin the phrase”, she was proud that she and Martin were “able to, maybe, make some divorces a little bit easier, happier”.
“It makes me feel pretty proud when people come up to me on the streets and say: ‘Thank you for introducing that concept because I’ve become good friends with my ex,’” she explained. “I’m very happy that we were able to play a small part in that cultural shift.”
In an essay published in British Vogue on Paltrow’s 50th birthday in 2022, she also confessed the term had sounded “a bit full of itself, painfully progressive and hard to swallow” when she first heard it.
“I was intrigued, less by the phrase, but by the sentiment. Was there a world where we could break up and not lose everything? Could we be a family, even though we were not a couple? We decided to try,” she wrote.
