Gwyneth Paltrow Ski Trial Is Now A Musical
Aside from popping up occasionally in Marvel movies, Gwyneth Paltrow hasn’t done much acting (outside of voicework) in recent years. She’s mostly focused on growing her lifestyle brand Goop, but that didn’t keep the Shakespeare In Love star from entertaining fans in a very different way during a televised trial where she defended herself from optometrist Terry Sanderson’s accusation that she injured him through reckless actions on the ski slopes of Deer Valley Resort in 2016.
That 2022 trial became fodder for some great memes, but nobody could have predicted this: according to CNN, The Pleasance & Awkward Productions has an upcoming play titled Gwyneth Goes Skiing.
Gwyneth Goes Skiing
If you didn’t follow all the social media jokes and drama during the trial, then you probably have a simple question: why the hell would anyone create a tongue-in-cheek play based on Gwyneth Paltrow’s trial? Normally, high-profile celebrity trials don’t get adapted into stage productions. For example, nobody seems in a hurry to adapt the infamous Johnny Depp/Amber Heard defamation trial into a play, so what makes Paltrow’s case so special?
The Bizarre Story
The short answer is that the entire trial seemed absurd from beginning to end. The idea of a random optometrist simmering with rage for years before taking one of the world’s most famous faces to court is wild, for example, and the setting for the alleged injury–a pricy Utah ski resort–positively screamed “rich people problems.”
The cherry on top of all this weird legal drama is that after Gwyneth Paltrow won, she whispered “I wish you well” to her accuser, creating a new round of iconic memes among those watching the trial (many of whom we suspect were voraciously eating popcorn while watching the drama unfold).
What To Expect From The Production
It would be difficult to stage all of this in a non-humorous way, so we’re pleased to see that Pleasance & Awkward Productions is leaning into the absurdist content inherent in the Gwyneth Paltrow trial. The synopsis of the show goes out of its way to contrast Paltrow and some of her more viral moments with her fairly unassuming legal foe: “She’s the Goop-founding, Door-Sliding, Shakespeare-In-Loving, consciously-uncoupling Hollywood superstar” while “He’s a retired Optometrist from Utah. In 2016, they went skiing.”
Where To Catch The Musical
The show will make its debut at Pleasance London Main House Cabaret in London and run from December 13 to December 23, and the show’s synopsis manages to poke further fun at Gwyneth Paltrow and Terry Sanderson while also playfully mocking their own choice to release the play so close to the holidays. “On the slopes of Deer Valley, their worlds collided, and so did they – literally,” according to the synopsis.
“Seven years later in 2023, they went to court…This is their story,” it reads, adding a cheeky “Kind of” and “Not really” before finishing with “But also, it’s at Christmas.” In terms of lampooning Gwyneth Paltrow’s antics, the show has a wonderful performer: Linus Karp will be playing Paltrow, and the promotional photos show her in glam pink ski gear. In one photo, Karp is holding up a candle (as a joking reference to Paltrow’s infamous Goop candles, some of which are designed to smell like female anatomy) that simply reads “This smells like a lawsuit.”
Another Round Of Memes?
Meanwhile, Joseph Martin is playing Terry Sanderson to Karp’s Gwyneth Paltrow, though the site for the play humorously refers to him only as “The Other Guy.” If we’re being bluntly honest, this play already sounds like it’s going to be a hell of a lot more entertaining than most of the future Marvel movies Paltrow might star in. When Pepper Potts does reappear, however, here’s hoping she whispers “I wish you well” to a bad guy and kicks off another round of ski slope shenanigan memes.
