Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle website Goop has come under fire several times in the past few years for selling products with some outrageous and unfounded claims, so when it was announced that the company was bringing its ideals to Netflix with The Goop Lab, many were taken aback. Well, the show debuted almost a month ago, and has received a lot of criticism for promoting treatments and therapies without a lot of science behind them to back up claims of how they supposedly help people. If you think Paltrow is daunted by any of those negative reviews, though, you'd be wrong.
Considering how many times Goop has had to deal with issues over the products it sells, including having to pay $145,000 in civil penalties in 2018 for selling "vaginal eggs" with dishonest claims, it's not completely surprising that Gwyneth Paltrow isn't phased by criticisms of The Goop Lab which call it pseudo-science and fake news. Here's what she had to say about all the negative press:
I will never understand the level of fascination and projection. But we don’t want to not change the conversation just to please everybody. We do what we do in total integrity, and we love what we do. It doesn’t even matter, really, that some are trying to get attention for writing about us.
As you can see from what Gwyneth Paltrow told Variety, not only do the things that people have said about The Goop Lab not bother her, but she seems to be a bit baffled by the intense scrutiny her company is under. As far as Paltrow is concerned, the main point is that she and the rest of those at Goop are doing their best to "change the conversation" by bringing alternative therapies to light, and because they do it with "total integrity," there's nothing wrong with seeing what might help people feel and / or look better.
The Goop Lab explores different alternative therapies in each episode, all based around a specific topic like cold therapy, energy healing or psychic mediums, and then has Paltrow and her employees test out various methods to see how they feel afterward. They jumped into ice cold lakes, had psychic readings, tried out their own psychic powers, went on really restrictive diets, had facials where slowly dissolving threads were surgically implanted into their faces and much more.
For the most part, no one had any complaints about their experiences, but it would be pretty easy to argue that, because these are all Goop employees undergoing the treatments, they're already open to trying such things and seeing validity where there may be none. It's also true that, while The Goop Lab does talk to experts in each field, some of them are clearly already close with Gwyneth Paltrow, and there aren't really opposing opinions or studies of the treatments offered.
But, none of this bothers Gwyneth Paltrow and she takes particular issue with media outlets that cried foul with the way topics were handled on The Goop Lab:
That kind of media, a lot of it is dying. The business model is failing, and they’re turning to the tabloidization to get the clicks. So it works, when they write about me, apparently. Because they keep doing. [I would be open to it] if it was something I could learn from.
There's no word yet on whether or not The Goop Lab will get a second season from Netflix, but Gwyneth Paltrow did also mention in her interview how difficult it was to narrow the topics down to six for Season 1, so it would seem that she and her team already have several possibilities for a new season should the streamer ask for it.
All of Season 1 of The Goop Lab is available right now on Netflix, but for more on what you can watch on TV in the new year, check out our 2020 midseason guide and Netflix schedule!
