Viewers tuning in to Gwyneth Paltrow’s new podcast, The Goop Guide, will be forgiven for assuming the show was filmed in a room inside her serene and stylish Montecito home. The setting for her new venture (launching on Netflix and Spotify November 11) upends the paradigm of a podcaster on a sofa next to a potted fern.
The Goop Guide is indeed recorded inside a studio, but Paltrow approached the space with just as much intention as her own home, enlisting interior designer Marie Carson to bring it to life. “I wanted it to feel like a beautiful, elevated nook of somebody’s old stone house somewhere,” Paltrow tells AD of the space.
“If we can’t be recording in my home, I want to give guests the feeling of comfort and coziness,” Paltrow says of her goal for the studio’s design.
The catch? Carson only had mere days to turn the sterile studio into something far cozier and conducive to the wide-ranging conversations Paltrow hoped to conduct during the show, which launches with Zoe Saldana as the first guest. “We started to decorate remotely and I looked at it and thought, ‘This is not the direction,’” Paltrow says of the space’s first iteration. “And so I called Marie and said, ‘We’re filming in like a week and I need you to come and fix this.’”
It wasn’t the tight timeline that initially gave Carson pause. “At first I said, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve never done a set! What does that mean?’” recalls the designer. “But when Gwyneth said she wanted it to feel like a beautiful room in her home, I thought, ‘Well, I can do that.’” Previously, the two had collaborated on a space at Paltrow’s Brentwood property, which meant there was already a creative shorthand between them—incredibly helpful when they had only days to outfit the space before shooting commenced. “Gwyneth has such a strong direction of what she wants and such excellent taste,” Carson says. “So I was able to take her notes and run with it.”
The focal point for the studio’s design is a late 18th-century Flemish tapestry. “It added life to the space,” says Carson.
The Goop Kitchen founder wanted the focal point of the design to be a late 18th-century Flemish tapestry, whose landscape imagery features a palette of muted greens and taupes. “I thought it would be beautiful because of what they’ve lived through and what they’ve seen,” Paltrow says of tapestries. “I love them because you think about all the life going on in front of these things for hundreds and hundreds of years.” To complement the hanging, Carson added a 19th-century Belgian trestle table from Meg Turner Gallery, antique chairs reupholstered in Loro Piana brushed cashmere, and a handwoven hemp and silk rug sourced from Mansour. “Marie’s execution is flawless,” Paltrow says. “She has a real knack for finding the perfect thing that has the right dimensions and warmth.”
Paltrow commissioned a painting of magnolia from artist Rob Reynolds. The sconces are from Goop’s collection with CB2.
A close-up of one of the podcast chairs: an antique sourced from a shop in Pasadena and reupholstered with Loro Piana cashmere.
In the handful of shows Paltrow’s filmed so far, it appears her guests (which include Robert Downey Jr., Kelly Wearstler, Ke Huy Quan, and more) feel similarly at home. “Everyone who walks in is like, ‘I’ve done so many podcasts and I’ve never seen one like this! It feels like a real room and I feel so at ease.’’ she says. Considering Paltrow will be filming dozens of episodes inside the space, she’s happy it’s comfortable for her as well. “I would definitely live in this room,” she says. “I think about this room all the time now when I’m not in it because I’m so obsessed with it.”
