Does Gwyneth Paltrow See Meghan Markle as Lifestyle Business Competition? Here’s What She Says

Gwyneth Paltrow is welcoming Meghan Markle back into the lifestyle space.

The Goop founder and CEO, 52, said she'd “never” view the Duchess of Sussex, 43, as competition as she shared her full support of Markle's new lifestyle brand As ever in a new interview.

“I was raised to see other women as friends, not foes,” Paltrow told Vanity Fair in a new cover story published March 18. “I think there’s always more than enough to go around. Everybody deserves an attempt at everything that they want to try.”

“Another woman is never your competition,” she said. 

Paltrow, who lives in the same neighborhood as Meghan and Prince Harry in Montecito, Calif., founded Goop originally as a home and lifestyle weekly newsletter in 2008. The brand has since developed into a successful wellness empire worth $250 million, per Forbes. 

Markle, meanwhile, launched her lifestyle brand As ever alongside her new cooking and gardening series, With Love, Meghan, earlier in March. She previously had a lifestyle and cooking blog called The Tig, which launched in 2014 before closing down after meeting Harry, 40, in 2017.

While Paltrow admitted she isn’t close to her royal neighbors, she said that Meghan seemed "lovely" and acknowledged her instinct to support women in the public eye.

“I don’t know Meghan and Harry,” she told VF. “I mean, I’ve met Meghan, who seems really lovely, but I don’t know her at all. Maybe I’ll try to get through their security detail and bring them a pie.” 

“[When] there’s noise about certain women in the culture, I do have, always, a strong instinct to stand up for them,” added Paltrow. 

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Speaking at the Forbes Power Women’s Summit in October 2024, Paltrow shared that Goop has had many trials along with its wins to become the successful business it is today.

“When we follow those instincts of the company, it's usually the right thing to do. The best thing to do is just embrace your niche, and scale can come from that," she said. "A lot of mistakes have come from me not understanding that."

"...Some years we've doubled in growth. Some years we are flat. Some years we're down, then we're back up," added Paltrow. "But we keep going. We have a lot of intention around what we're doing, and I'm proud that we're still alive and kicking.”