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It has not been a great week for actor and lifestyle tycoon Gwyneth Paltrow, once one of Hollywood’s hottest properties, who successfully founded a hugely lucrative wellness empire known as Goop.
But in a plot twist that seems as unlikely as any denouement in the movies she once graced, Paltrow spent much of last week in the drab surroundings of a Park City, Utah court room.
She was there – in a town that plays host to the famous Sundance film festival – to fight a decidedly unglamorous battle against Terry Sanderson, a 76-year-old retired optometrist and military veteran.
Sanderson claims Paltrow, 50, was “out of control” and recklessly crashed into him on a beginner’s slope at the nearby Deer Valley Resort leaving the retiree “facedown in the snow, unconscious”, with a concussion and four broken ribs. Cue – lawsuits.
It has been a surreal, periodically hokey legal drama – one that would likely not get too far had it been dreamed up in a Hollywood writers’ room.
“Mr Sanderson categorically hit me and that is the truth,” Paltrow said on the stand, claiming that when she was hit from behind by Sanderson, his skis between hers, she wondered “if this a practical joke or is someone doing something perverted”.
Paltrow said it felt that a big man had pushed into her, “forcing my legs apart and then there was a body pressing against me and there was a very strange grunting noise”.
Paltrow’s attorneys fought off efforts by the Sanderson’s attorneys to insert the subtext of Paltrow’s wealth and celebrity into the trial, but aspects of both, including the $8,800 she paid for her family’s day ski pass and tuition, have crept in.
“I feel really sorry for him. It feels like he’s had a difficult life,” Paltrow said in a tone of false concern or bonhomie that has typified courtroom exchanges.
But what may have proved the most important piece of evidence, a GoPro film that Sanderson emailed his family after the event – under the subject line “I’m famous … At what cost?” –, has gone missing.
But it’s also just the latest in a series of hits that have impacted Paltrow, her public image and her business empire in recent months.
The courtroom scenes played out a week after Paltrow posted a TikTok video that triggered a wave of social media backlash. She described her apparently meagre wellness diet (vegetables, a largely paleo – as in Paleolithic or caveman – diet mixed with intermittent fasting and a near-daily lunch of soup or bone broth) that was itself extracted from a podcast The Art of Being Well in which she said she has “used ozone therapy, rectally” and recognized that practice was “pretty weird”.
For many observers, growing cynical on the wellness fad, a lot of that was going a bit too far.
The US food and drug administration has warned against ozone therapies, saying it is “a toxic gas with no known useful medical application”. But in the context of Goop’s famous vagina-scented candles and strengthening jade eggs, coffee enemas, gem-infused vampire repellent, it’s arguably not weird at all and on-brand.
In a recent Goop website post Paltrow said her “most lasting mistakes and the mess that comes with them have all stemmed from me not standing fully in my truth and speaking from it, come what may”.
Paltrow’s truth has turned out to be a good business model for many years. The wellness industry is estimated to be worth $450bn in the US, and growing at more than 5% annually, according to a Future of Wellness report by Mckinsey & Co last year. Wellness, it said, “is a growing priority for consumers and investors, but unmet need remains”.
But Paltrow’s corner of the market has taken some hits. Paltrow shuttered her three-year-old Goop store in London store after losing an estimated $1.7m (£1.4m). The company blamed the closing on the pandemic – Covid-19 and the vaccine being a politically treacherous area that wellness brands mostly avoided, preferring to offer advice on “boosting immunity”.
Last year news website Insider reported that more than 140 Goop employees had left the business since 2019, complaining of low pay, burnout and leadership problems as reasons for leaving. In 2021, Goop was sued over claims that the infamous vagina candle was prone to exploding.
Trend forecaster Sean Monahan, who last year published Anatomy of a Vibe Shift on a Substack called 8Ball, said there’s a move against the pseudo-spiritual end of wellness, pointing to a Californian craze for the off-label use of diabetes drug Ozempic for weight loss and Paltrow’s confirmation that during her recent podcast she was hooked up to an IV vitamin drip.
“There’s a fatigue with magical thinking and the west coast woo-woo perspective,” Monehan advised. “The association of health and diet with spiritual practices culled from the east is waning.”
But none of this was on display in the court last week. Instead it was just a legal tussle over the drama of a skiing accident as the legal teams for each side went after each other with no holds barred claims and counter claims.
Sanderson’s team said the collision devastated his life. “After his accident, he deteriorated abruptly. And many of the activities that he used to do, he stopped doing,” witness Dr Wendell Gibby testified last week. “The rib fractures certainly corroborate that there was enough force to cause a head injury.”
But Paltrow’s attorneys argue that the collision was Sanderson’s fault since he was higher up on slope – Utah law gives the lower skier right of way – and he’d afterwards said he was fine. They described his claims as “utter BS”.
Instead, Paltrow alleges that Sanderson “plowed into her back” on the beginners run at the skiers-only mountain known for its groomed runs and après-ski champagne yurts, and apologized. The “shaken and upset” actress, her lawyers say, “quit skiing for the day even though it was still morning”.
Paltrow’s attorneys have said Sanderson is looking to exploit Paltrow’s wealth and celebrity, and asked the jury to not be distracted by pity for the plaintiff. If Sanderson has the symptoms described, they result from old age – not a ski collision.
An earlier $3.1m claim against Paltrow was thrown out by Judge Kent Holmberg who ruled that Sanderson wasn’t entitled to punitive damages. The claim against Paltrow now alleges damages of “more than $300,000”. Paltrow, whose goop brand is valued at $250m, is claiming a symbolic $1 plus legal costs.
Courtrooms are not typically good places for celebrities to venture but some experts think the setting and bad lighting could actually end up benefitting the Paltrow brand – focused as it is on glamour and beauty – by generating a sense of sympathy and allowing a glimpse of Paltrow the person behind Paltrow the image.
But image perfectionism is now off-trend, said Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence, citing Instagram influencer fatigue.
“It’s a question of authenticity. Creators or celebrities that launch their own brands need to make sure their messages are authentic,” Enberg said “People don’t want to see perfect lives. They respond more positively to raw real content than the polished content on Instagram.”
The trial is delivering a healthy dose of that. But even inside the courtroom, Paltrow and her team can’t quite leave the temptation to image-manage behind them and remind people that Paltrow remains a star.
On Thursday, Paltrow’s legal team was making nice, offering to “bring in treats” for courtroom security. The offer was knocked back by a courtroom objection. “Thank you, but no thank you,” Holmberg said.
The judge has also limited photography in the court and in the parking lot, where a rope cordons off Paltrow’s paths in and out of court. Yet she arrives in court holding a notebook to obscure her face. And on Wednesday, Paltrow’s attorneys asked for a court room camera trained on the actress to be re-directed.
“She needs to lose that blue notebook, it comes across as imperious,” Johnny Depp’s lawyer Benjamin Chew told Court TV. “This isn’t a family vacation with an expectation of privacy. It’s a courthouse. She and lawyer do her no service when she’s playing the part of a prima donna.”
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