Gwyneth Paltrow Opened Up About Her Personal Experience with Intimacy Ahead of 'Sex, Love & goop' Premiere

Getty Images

Gwyneth Paltrow is bringing her lifestyle brand Goop to Netflix — and she's not afraid to bare her soul or her sex life to viewers.

The Oscar winner's Sex, Love & goop, which premieres Thursday, Oct. 21, will follow Paltrow, 49, and several couples as they navigate the often tricky waters of love and sex in an effort to improve their intimate lives. In the series, Paltrow also gets candid about her own sex life with husband Brad Falchuk, and she has no qualms about it.

"The conversations with me are conducted with this amazing therapist named Michaela Baum, and she's someone that I've worked with and that I have a lot of respect for, and I also thought it was really important for me to show up with honesty and vulnerability around these topics," said Paltrow in a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight. "I think that's the point of the show, to show different examples of what honesty and vulnerability can look like, and I was happy to do that and share."

Paltrow is eager to normalize discussions of intimacy and sex, which can often make people feel vulnerable. "There's so many people who really love their partner, and they are really struggling with the intimate aspect of their relationship," said Paltrow to Entertainment Tonight. "And they're really aware of what they're bringing in from other areas of their lives, or childhoods that are negatively impacting their marriages or whatever the case may be, and so people were willing, and they'd go through a whole process. But I'm just so in awe of these couples who just showed up with so much bravery." (Related: Gwyneth Paltrow's Sunscreen Routine Is Raising Some Eyebrows)

The couples featured in the series bare all, literally and figuratively, in an effort to improve communication with their partners and work through any of their own stigmas or issues surrounding sex and intimacy. Paltrow found that through the process, many of the participants realized their problems with getting what they want in bed echo in other areas of their lives as well. (Related: 50+ Sexual 'Would You Rather' Questions to Uncover Anyone's Deeper Desires)

"What I find so interesting about this particular area of sexuality, is that it's the realm where all the friction is going to come right up, right? Like anything that is unhealed is going to come up, anything that isn't working is going to come up," said Paltrow to Entertainment Tonight. "So, it's like this amazing opportunity to see in the microcosm of how you are in an intimate relationship, how is that impacting the rest of your life? I've always been interested in [it], and more and more so since I've learned more and more about it in this area, and how we relate to ourselves, what is the shame that we carry, and why are we so afraid to ask for what we want?" (Related: Gwyneth Paltrow Talks Candidly About COVID-19 and Stress With California's Surgeon General)

"I think if I've learned anything throughout the course of my life, is that we as individuals really can impact the outcome of how we feel in our day-to-day lives," she continued. "What is the relationship that we have with ourselves, and how does that determine how we feel out in the world with ourselves and other people?"

In terms of conversations about sex with her two children, daughter Apple, 17, and son Moses, 15, whom she shares with ex-husband Chris Martin, Paltrow told Entertainment Tonight that she tries to be "neutral on the topic," noting, "I think my generation, we got a lot of messages around sex that made us feel bad about it."

"I try to just be curious, and teenagers are never going to want to talk to their parents about sex, ever, so I sort of follow their lead," she added. "And luckily, in middle school they had a very thorough sex education, so the school handled the kind of 'birds and the bees' parts, and then I am there for any questions, but the questions are pretty minimal."