Gwyneth Paltrow is opening up about the difficulties of blending families with husband Brad Falchuk.
“I have one girl and one boy, and then Brad has one girl and one boy,” Paltrow, 53, said during the Tuesday, September 8, episode of the “Friends Keep Secrets” podcast, referring to daughter Apple, 22, and son Moses, 20, with ex-husband Chris Martin and Falchuk’s daughter, Isabella, 22, and son, Brody, 20, with ex-wife Suzanne Bukinik. “So I have two girls and two boys.”
The Goop founder added, “They all get along, and it’s so fun.”
Paltrow and Falchuk, 55, tied the knot in 2018. The Iron Man star admitted on Tuesday that it was “so hard” to combine their families.
“It was like the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” she said. “It just didn’t go well for a really long time.”
Paltrow explained that “kids can feel like they’re being sort of demoted” when their parents remarry. (The Seven actress was married to Martin, 49, from 2003 to 2016, while Falchuk was married to Bukinik, 56, from 1994 to 2013.)
“They’re not, but they can feel like [that] if there’s a new parent that comes in, and it can cause a lot of disturbance. So it was hard. It was really hard at the beginning,” she said.
Paltrow said their family dynamic improved with time.
“We never did family therapy altogether, but we, I don’t know, it just ended up … I did a lot of work on myself and around, like, why is this so triggering, and why are my feelings so hurt, and why am I having like these non-adult reactions to a child, you know?” she continued. “And they ended up teaching me so much, and I really am so grateful that I traversed through all of that, but it was rough, but now it’s amazing.”
Paltrow concluded, “They’re all best friends.”
Last year, the businesswoman revealed that Falchuk’s kids filled a void in her heart.
“My dad [Bruce Paltrow] used to say the only regret he had in his entire life was not having more kids, and I felt like that for a long time until I got yours too,” she told her husband on her “Goop” podcast in April 2025. “I got to tack on.”
Paltrow also got candid about the obstacles she faced while building her relationship with Falchuk’s kids.
“We traversed through some really rough things,” she said on her podcast last year. “One of the most profound lessons that I’ve learned from my relationship with your daughter, which is now so fantastic, is there was [a lot of] testing going on. She was testing me at the time to see at what point I would reject her.”
For his part, Falchuk said he “always” believed that they could work through their issues.
Paltrow concluded, “It’s been amazing for me to watch all four kids, kind of, grow into this and embrace it. It’s almost, like, the payoff is greater when it’s your stepkid than your own kid because … it’s not as natural of a relationship. You’re able to create something with someone who’s not one of your kids but becomes one of your kids.”
