Not as well as it seems? Rosamund Pike had some choice words about the wellness industry when asked about Gwyneth Paltrow’s brand, Goop.
“I think we’re all being conned by the wellness industry,” the Gone Girl actress, 44, said in an interview with The Guardian published Sunday, June 11. “This idea that it’s no longer enough to be healthy and we have to be ‘well’ is something that needs to be interrogated.”
Pike was speaking to the outlet to promote her new BBC Sounds audio series, People Who Knew Me. The show features “satirical mentions” of Goop — which was launched by the Iron Man star, 50, in 2008. In the radio drama, she stars as Emily Morris, a woman who assumes a new identity after faking her disappearance after 9/11.
The England native — who shares two sons with longtime partner Robie Uniacke — went on to state that consumers find the wellness industry “seductive” because it caters toward “things that people are ashamed to want, like youth beauty and fitness.”
She also noted how the #MeToo movement — which encouraged people to speak out against sexual abuse and harassment — “gave women an opportunity to escape some of the demands put on them.” Pike continued: “Now, in a way, people are voluntarily flocking back to being controlled but in a different guise, by these wellness claims. It’s politicised [sic] our food, politicised [sic] our exercise and I think it’s really dangerous.”
Paltrow’s Goop has had its fair share of eye-raising moments over the years, from releasing pills designed to increase female libido to a fake pack of disposable diapers that cost $120. Perhaps one of the company’s most controversial products was the “This Smells Like My Vagina” candle — which launched in 2020 and is no longer available.
“It sort of started as a joke,” the Oscar winner explained of the candle on a January 2020 episode of Late Night With Seth Meyers. “I was with the nose Douglas Little for his brand Heretic and we were kind of messing around. And I smelled this beautiful thing, and I was like, ‘That smells like my vagina.’ And I was kidding, obviously. And we were on mushrooms.”
She quickly followed up her comment by clarifying that she and Little “weren’t on mushrooms.”
The candle made headlines again the following year after one reportedly exploded in a U.K. woman’s home. “The candle exploded and emitted huge flames, with bits flying everywhere,” North London native Jody Thompson told The Sun in January 2021. “I’ve never seen anything like it. The whole thing was ablaze and it was too hot to touch. There was an inferno in the room.”
At the time, a Goop spokesperson told Us Weekly that they were unable to verify the candle’s authenticity, as it was not purchased “through the outlet.” They continued: “At Goop, we vet the products we sell and make customer safety a priority, so we’ve alerted the manufacturer to the woman’s issue and have also reached out to her to send her some Goop products to help pass the days in quarantine.”
Pike isn’t the only person to speak out against the company. Goop’s former chief content officer, Elise Loehnen, called out the company’s cleanse culture in a March 2022 Instagram video. “When I left Goop, I vowed to never do another cleanse again and went into full rebellion, which has been kind of fun, and definitely healthy in terms of letting go of ideas of what my body should look like as a 42-year-old who has had two kids,” she wrote in the post’s caption. “I needed to break a tendency to be critical and punishing. To chastise myself. All of it. I stopped weighing myself completely.”
In the video, she went on to state that she’s “trying to get to a place where I can again be in conversation with my body.” Paltrow and Goop did not respond to Us’ request for comment at the time.
