Gwyneth Paltrow has been slammed online for the ‘patronizing’ question she asked Ethan Hawke during a recent segment for Vanity Fair, Daily Mail reports.
The two reunited 27 years after they starred in the 1998 film Great Expectations together, the modern adaptation of the classic novel by Charles Dickens.
The longtime friends got together for a fun video filmed for Vanity Fair, but some fans felt like Gwyneth Paltrow appeared to take a dig at the star as they reminisced.
‘Do you still eat Taco Bell?’ Gwyneth Paltrow asked Hawke in a tone that some X users did not seem to think was too nice.
‘That’s really funny,’ Hawke said in response. ‘My idea, when Paltrow Gwyneth and I met, of a special night – we’re going to Taco Bell.’
He added that when he had finished his first novel, The Hottest State, he also celebrated by getting Taco Bell.
‘It’s a sickness,’ Paltrow remarked as she looked into the camera.
‘I think it’s remarkable how we haven’t changed… and I’m proud of that,’ Hawke said.
The clip was posted on TikTok and on X, where it sparked backlash for Paltrow.
‘She’s so patronizing and that remark was meant to be such a low dig. But he just turned it around with grace,’ one user wrote on X.
‘She doesn’t seem very fun to be around,’ another slammed.
Someone else typed: ‘Celebrities are insufferable.’
‘You both play make-pretend for a living. Get over yourselves,’ read a fourth post.
A fifth said: ‘She needs to get out more. [She doesn’t] trust anyone who doesn’t eat Taco Bell on occasion? Wtf is wrong with her?’
‘I don’t care if I was a quadrillionaire, I’m still eating Taco Bell. With large Baja blast,’ another person chimed in.
However, other users seemed to believe that Paltrow wasn’t taking a swipe at Hawke, and rather, suggested that it was an ‘inside joke’ between the two actors.
‘Oh, please. Clearly you don’t know her sense of humor. That’s just poking fun at old times since they’ve known each other for ages,’ one person wrote.
Another user agreed: ‘It wasn’t a dig. She has years of history with him and part of that was his eating Taco Bell after a special event. She acknowledged knowing that.’
‘You thought she was being patronizing vs bringing up something that’s an inside joke between the two of them?’ someone else added.
Paltrow’s joint interview with Vanity Fair comes after Coldplay kiss cam victim Kristin Cabot blasted the star for her role in worsening the scandal.
Kristin Cabot and ex-Astronomer CEO Andy Byron were seen cozied up to each other on the big screen at the band’s Boston gig in July, but quickly separated and tried to hide when they realized their intimate embrace had made the jumbotron.
Coldplay frontman Chris Martin – who is Paltrow’s ex-husband and father to her two children – called the couple out at the time for ‘having an affair’ because of their fraught reaction and the interaction caused a frenzy online.
In the days that followed, Astronomer named Paltrow its ‘temporary spokesperson’ and had the actress star in a hilarious PR video in which she answered questions about the alleged ‘affair’ saga.
Cabot has now branded Paltrow a ‘hypocrite’ for mocking her situation, despite being the founder of Goop, a company that aims to ’empower, support and uplift women.’
‘I was such a fan of her company, which seemed to be about uplifting women,’ Cabot told The Times.
‘And then she did this. I thought, “How dare she after the beating she got for all the conscious uncoupling stuff.” What a hypocrite.’
Paltrow is credited with coining the phrase ‘conscious uncoupling’ following her amicable split from Martin in 2014.
Cabot, 53, admitted that she threw away every Goop product that she owned after Astronomer’s PR stunt.