Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin may have consciously uncoupled nearly a decade ago, but that hasn’t stopped them from becoming the blueprint for co-parents everywhere in the years since. After proving that she’s still as close as ever with her ex-husband by sharing a sweet birthday tribute to the singer back in March, Paltrow continued to sing Martin’s praises by opening up about their co-parenting relationship in a new interview with People.
Speaking with the publication ahead of Goop’s latest beauty launch, the actress got candid about Martin’s interactions with their two children, Moses and Apple.
“He has this sweet child-like spirit, and I love that he will be like, 'Let's go jump in the ocean,’ when it's 58 degrees,” Gwyneth said of her ex-husband. “Or, 'Let's go to this weird guitar store.' He always wants to do these fun adventures with them and activities.”
She added that the Coldplay singer “has a real sweetness. And so he brings that to the way that he parents them ... He's sort of gone a lot, he's on the road a lot, but he brings — it's almost like he comes and sprinkles fairy dust.”
Gwyneth also opened up about the pair’s initial decision to separate back in 2014, explaining that it was always about keeping their children’s best interests in mind.
"I just always say, to say you want to put your kids first and actually to put them first are two different things,” she explained. “I think we all think we want to put our kids first, but when it's sort of ... you're making a sacrifice or you feel angry or hurt, sometimes it's hard to do that.”
Paltrow continued, “Everybody who had come from a divorced house, they said, 'It wasn't really the divorce. Of course, it was hard to go back and forth to different houses, but that wasn't really the thing that messed me up. It was that my dad wouldn't come into the house to pick us up, or my mother would drop us at the end of the driveway or they couldn't even be together at graduation.'”
“Those were the things that really hurt the kids," the Goop founder concluded. "And so Chris and I just said, 'Let's just never do that and let's try to get through the hard part of this and remember our friendship.'"