Gwyneth Paltrow and Dakota Johnson‘s friendship is a very conscious coupling. “We’re actually very good friends,” Paltrow said on her Oct. 5 Instagram Stories after a fan inquired about their relationship. Given that Johnson is currently dating Paltrow’s ex-husband, Chris Martin, this might not be the answer viewers were expecting. But over the years, Johnson and Paltrow have cultivated a truly close friendship. “I love her so much. She’s an adorable, wonderful person,” Paltrow said.
Johnson and Martin began dating in 2017, a few years after Paltrow and Martin’s “conscious uncoupling” in 2014. It didn’t take long for Paltrow to offer her stamp of approval on her ex’s budding romance. “I love her. I can see how it would seem weird because it’s sort of unconventional. But I think, in this case, just having passed through it iteratively, I just adore her,” Paltrow said in a 2020 interview with Harper’s Bazaar. “I always start to think of the ampersand sign – what else can you bring in, instead of being resistant to or being made insecure by?”
Paltrow and Martin currently coparent their two kids – Apple and Moses – and have since spent plenty of time together with their new partners. (Paltrow married Brad Falchuk in 2018.) “I would say very rarely is it difficult now,” Paltrow told Harper’s Bazaar of her current relationship with Martin. “We’ve learned how to communicate with each other. We love each other.”
Martin and Johnson even joined Paltrow and Falchuk for a joint vacation in the Hamptons in 2018. The same year, the family also celebrated Thanksgiving together on the East Coast, marking Johnson’s first major holiday with both Paltrow and Martin. Paltrow took their friendship more public in 2019, sharing a birthday tribute to Johnson and calling her an “absolute gem.”
Although they aren’t regularly seen together in public, rest assured their friendship is still going strong. In fact, Johnson told Vanity Fair she’s especially motivated to look after her friendships as a result of her own upbringing. “The life I led growing up was remarkable – the places I went and how we lived and what we were able to experience. But we also struggled with internal family dynamics,” she shared in a 2022 interview. “It’s better to be kind, and it’s also really nice that everybody actually really loves each other and has each other’s backs.” Read on to see more of Paltrow and Johnson’s supportive, modern family-style friendship.
Related: How Rosalía and Kylie Jenner Became Friends
