Michele Manelis talks with Gwyneth Paltrow ahead of The Politician, just launched on Netflix
You have an unusual family life. You're still close with your ex-husband, Chris Martin, you're newly married to producer-writer Brad Falchuck
and you all seem to be in sync and do family events together. Presumably you do this for your children [Apple, 15, Moses, 13]?
Yes. And I think they appreciate that we are still a family and they love the closeness. My children are real family-people, whether it's just us or our extended family. And so yeah, I got remarried almost a year ago.
And you and your husband lived apart for the first year?
Yes. We decided for the first year to keep our separate residences and make the transition for the kids a little bit more gentle, because we both have two teenagers. And it's actually worked out well. We finally moved in together recently, which is really fun. We are trying to make the transition easy on the children.
In raising kids, what was one of the primary lessons you wanted to teach them?
I think as a mother, for me, it's very important that I raise children who are not scared to feel their feelings. I think a lot of us were raised in a generation where we were told, "Don't feel that, don't show that. It's not appropriate to show anger or sadness at the dinner table." I think our generation was really taught to suppress emotion and I actually think it's not good for our souls. We're human beings and we experience a cross-section of emotions every day. That's part of being human.
How do you express anger?
Well, of course there's a time and a place for anger and a way to express it but the idea that we are taught to not feel it, I actually think is really harmful. So, if I'm in the car and I lose my temper because there's an idiot driving in front of me, then I say to my kids, "I'm sorry but I'm feeling a little road rage today, I'm getting my anger out today." But I do think when we say to children, "That's bad. Don't feel that way," it creates shame. And it's so natural to feel anger or hatred or grief or any of those things that are harder for us to feel. And I think the more that we can say, "Hey, just feel it," then it goes through faster and I think it's much healthier.