‘There’s a reason why the world’s most iconic buildings are by a park’, Gwyneth Paltrow said knowingly to the camera, as she walked out of a luxury New York building towards her car.
Appearing in a new advert that’s currently doing the rounds on social media, I’d happily started watching the Hollywood actress on my phone without even glancing at any of the captions that came alongside it.
It started with her in bed saying: ‘waking up for a morning run can be brutal’, followed by her going for a run in Central Park, before heading back to swap her sweats for a suit and heading out of her building.
‘51 Park’ she directed her driver.
‘New York?’ he asked, to which she replied with a smile: ‘No, Herzliya, Israel’.
I stared at my screen unblinking, wondering whether I had heard that right. I quickly re-watched the advert, and even moved the phone closer to my face, straining as if I expected her to say completely different words.
I was then subjected to 3D renderings of the towering real estate development, called 51Park, that our candle-loving star Gwyneth was promoting.
In Israel.
I was filled with shock. Promoting a scheme in this country couldn’t be any more tone deaf.
Because a mere hour away from this real estate project, Gaza is still enduring attacks in the Israel and Palestine war that has been going on for three years. Actually, it’s been going on since 1948, when the state of Israel was first founded in what was then British-mandated Palestine.
It feels absurd to be saying this: but no-one should be telling people to buy real estate so close to where others are dying, and the Oscar-winning actress has shown just how tone deaf she is.
But this isn’t Gwyneth’s first dalliance into controversy, and it must be nice to have enough fame, money and success to be insulated from how bad your business decisions look to the average person.
Missy on X covered my thoughts exactly with this tweet: ‘Rich people being so greedy even when they can already get everything they want, but they want more so they’re willing to sell their soul for it.’
Paltrow’s fall into controversy first started with Goop. In 2008, she founded a wellness and lifestyle brand that peddled ‘new age’ advice, such as ‘eliminate white foods’ – instead of suggesting more healthy alternatives of ‘balancing’ your diet.
She received backlash from the NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens in 2020 for a Netflix show that boosted alternative therapies for physical and mental illnesses – he slammed the show for ‘spreading misinformation’.
In the show, she talked about ‘energy exorcisms’ and ‘vampire facials’, which are designed to cure psychological trauma – which Simon Stevens then called ‘dodgy procedures’.
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What do you think of Gwyneth Paltrow promoting the real estate project in Herzliya, Israel?
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It’s inappropriate given the context.
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She has the right to promote what she wants.
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I have no opinion on this matter.
By this point, I found anything she did as ridiculous and pseudo-scientific, agreeing whole-heartedly with the NHS executive. And as someone who thinks being healthy involves doing what makes you happy, I find her brand of wellness as potentially harmful.
And I wrote her off as a silly person. Just wholly unserious.
Her inane obsession with health and eating aside – Gwyneth is a millionaire who clearly hasn’t given too much thought to what she is endorsing.
Over the years, Paltrow has built a venture portfolio acting as an angel investor, backing startups like the cannabis-infused beverage maker Cann and acting as an advisory board member for companies like Orange Comet.
She also appeared as an investor on Shark Tank, where she negotiated a $400,000 deal with the breastmilk logistics startup Milkify.
Money doesn’t seem to be an issue for her, so I’m curious as to why she struck up this deal with an Israeli real estate developer, in an active warzone.
But maybe with money comes ignorance.
This is why perhaps her advert should not come as a shock, but it should definitely garner the disgust it has. And it is – appearing in an advert for real estate in a place experiencing war is an absolutely disgusting thing to do.
She seems so unaware of what she’s doing – but surely she knows what’s happening in the world. Surely someone has told her there’s a war going on. Multiple, in fact.
The backlash has been immediate, with some people referring to her as ‘Gwynocide Paltrow’.
Maybe it’s telling that Gwyneth hasn’t shared the advert herself, or spoken about it since its release. But, in my opinion, maybe millionaires like her simply don’t concern themselves with the results of war – just what they can profit from.
It feels like she only cares about her money, and the next thing she can ‘goopify’, while everything around her crashes and burns.
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