This Tuesday on The Run-Through, Chioma Nnadi sits down with British Vogue’s November 2025 cover star, Gwyneth Paltrow, to talk Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme—undoubtedly one of the most anticipated films of the year.
The riveting drama, about an ambitious young table tennis player named Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet)—and the ever-more-egregious risks he takes to prove his, well, supremacy—co-stars Paltrow as Kay Stone, the glamorous former movie star whom Mauser romances in London, then New York. (The cast also includes Kevin O’Leary, Odessa A’zion, Fran Drescher, Sandra Bernhard, and Tyler, the Creator.)
In her conversation with Chioma, Gwyneth talks about being wowed by the script, co-written by Safdie and Ronald Bronstein; feeling nervous to be on a film set again; Miyako Bellizzi’s beautiful costumes; Chalamet’s beautiful skin; and the kind of role that she’d be intrigued to take on next.
Plus, the two talk about more great fashion moments from Gwyneth’s filmography (the Calvin Klein in Sliding Doors! The Donna Karan in Great Expectations!); the wellness world’s recent obsession with protein and fiber; Gwyneth’s refreshing thoughts on aging (“I don’t want to try to look like I’m 28 years old”); and more. Read an excerpt from the interview below—then listen to the whole thing up above.
Chioma Nnadi: I went to see Marty Supreme last week, and I think it’s one of my favorite films in a long time. It was so much fun. I think I want to go and see it again. I’m itching to go and see it with friends and family. It was so much fun. I mean, it was very cool for this to be your first major return to the big screen, because it’s such a fab movie. And you said in interviews that you decided to return since your kids are now out of the house. You mentioned that you felt a little bit rusty, but what was particularly challenging for you? Because you didn’t look rusty at all, I must say.
Gwyneth Paltrow: Thank you so much. I think it’s like anything. When you do something a lot and with great frequency, it almost becomes a second skin. It’s sort of that 10,000-hour Malcolm Gladwell thing, and when you have a big break from something that you did with great frequency, it’s like, Wait a minute, do I know how to do this? I was really nervous. I had fear around the idea that I would not be able to sort of—I don’t know. Do I remember how to learn lines? How did I used to get into deep emotion? Is all that stuff still going to be there? And I remember the first day. It was great, because the first day was that scene where we’re rehearsing a play, and I started in the theater, so I felt like, Oh my God, thank God, I’m up here on the boards, working something out. We were working out the scene, so I was like, this is such a perfect blessing, that the way back into this is us trying to work through a scene onstage. And then it started to come back, and then I was like, Oh, okay, I remember how to do this. but I was nervous.
CN: Who did you channel to play the role of Kay? And what did you think when you read the script?
GP: When I read the script, I was like, Wow, this is so original, and how is this going to work? It was so ambitious on the page. All of the breathless kind of scenes in the cab and in the car and trying to get the dog, then juxtaposed with these very human moments, and I just thought, this is really ambitious. How is this director going to pull this off? But I trusted that he absolutely would. I thought a lot about Grace Kelly—sort of a darker, more fucked-up version of Grace Kelly, who had been this big movie star and then stopped to get married and seemed a bit broken after that, in a certain way. [That was] very parallel with Kay: She had this big film career, and then she gets married and she stops, and she’s incredibly broken because she’s given up her dream for some sense of security. And then her son was killed in the war, and she has this deep, deep sadness, which I thought was so intriguing. And also this kind of hardness that comes with being disappointed by life and disappointed by one turn of events after another. But then she still had this vulnerability there, so I just thought she was so interesting to play.
CN: In 2020, when you decided to step away from acting, you said that a lot of the shine of acting had worn off and that you felt you really didn’t love acting. But I didn’t get that feeling when you were on the screen. Do you feel like that sentiment has changed since having a break?
GP: It’s a very good question, and it’s something that I have been thinking about. I took my first break after my daughter was born, and I think I was so burnt out from doing it in my 20s in a way that I was really chasing something, and I thought, oh my God, I better do this role and this role and this role because what if I never get asked to do anything again? I have to do everything. And I was kind of trying to prove something to myself, and one year I did five movies and I just was so exhausted, and I thought there was an aspect of it that felt a bit fruitless, and I had come up against some kind of nasty people, and I was just like, I need to stop. I just need to stop.
And then when I went back here and there, slowly over the course of the next however many years, I thought, Oh, I do have love for this. But then it was complicated. I think it’s really wonderful when an artist can take a break if they’re feeling like they’re not generating something from the right place. And it’s interesting—when you make a living at art, we all need a paycheck, so sometimes you’re doing something that isn’t totally aligned with your artistic expression or your true self in that way, and that’s okay too, right? And it’s a blessing, obviously, to be able to make a living if you’re doing something artistic. But I think I needed the break in order to really start to germinate this excitement about doing it again, and this kind of freedom that comes with standing in a room and playing someone completely different from yourself with a different value set and getting all that excitement back. I was so excited to do my costume fittings, and the clothes in this movie were so phenomenal. I found myself excited in the hair and makeup chair, trying all these looks, and I hadn’t felt that way in a really long time. So I felt so grateful to be so full of life again about it. It was like that burnout feeling was just nowhere in sight.
CN: I loved the costumes too, and I thought that the look in the park is kind of incredible—that scarlet-red look. Are there any favorites that you have?
GP: Oh my gosh. It’s so funny because the costume director and I really wanted a different dress for the park scene, but Josh was like, “No, it has to be that. It has to be red.” I loved my costumes. I think one of my favorite ones—you never really saw the full look, unfortunately, because it’s when I was in the restaurant smoking—but there’s this beautiful yellow organza or chiffon beautiful thing that Miyako [Bellizzi], the costume designer, built, and I just thought, oh my God, this is just heaven on earth. And she’s so brilliant because she’s so cool. She’s such a New York cool girl, and she’s so stylish and she’s so on the cusp of everything. And then she was making these ’50s outfits that were so cool and so beautiful and so period, but also so modern. I was obsessed with her and the clothes.
CN: Oh, I’m totally obsessed with Miyako. If you haven’t heard of Miyako Bellizzi, you should absolutely go and Google her now. She’s one of the coolest girls in New York. But before we move on, I wanted to ask you, do you plan on acting more? I mean, you have so many pots on the fire. You launched a fashion line, and you obviously have this incredible wellness empire. Film is something that you have to be completely drawn to—spellbound by—to participate in, and I imagine that’s the criteria moving forward, right? I mean, what would tempt you to do another film now, given how much you have going on?
GP: I mean, you nailed it. My manager was asking me this the other day, and I said, I think if I was going to entertain doing stuff, I would do it differently than I did it when I was 21. And of course—when I was 21, as I said, I was just like, Okay, okay, sure. And I think this time I do have to balance it with my other job, which is incredibly demanding, but I think I would really want to make sure that I was doing something where I felt that I was really growing as an artist and really being challenged and working with incredible people, and just be very judicious about what I was going to do.
CN: I mean, is there a role that you feel you haven’t had a chance to play? Is there anything that you’re secretly wishing somebody could write for you?
GP: I think it would be really interesting to do a story of an older woman. I’m really interested in how women age and how they regard themselves as they age. And I look forward to playing older parts for sure. And I’ve never done anything where I’ve really transformed. In Marty Supreme, Timothy has pockmarks. In real life, he has beautiful skin, and he made a comment and I was like, “Oh, you can do microneedling for that.” And he’s like, “This is makeup.” I was like, “Oh, shit.” The makeup was so good that I thought he had little acne scars. Anyway, so I think it would be interesting to one day do something like that. I’ve never done anything like that where I’m really transformed in the face.
