Gwyneth Paltrow had a rocky start with stepparenting.
The actress spoke to her husband, Brad Falchuk, on Tuesday’s episode of her “Goop” podcast about her greatest “regrets” at raising his two children from a previous marriage.
“I got into it on tender hooks,” the Emmy winner said, explaining that she didn’t have a “playbook” for the role besides the “archetypal evil stepmother” portrayal in the media.
Despite Paltrow’s initial “trepidation,” the “Shakespeare in Love” star eventually decided, “F–k it, these are my kids.”
The Golden Globe winner, 50, was no longer afraid to “love” or “discipline” Isabella (18) and Brody (16) in addition to her own two children of the same age, Apple and Moses.
“If someone were to ask me for advice, I would say from day one, just really treat them like your kid,” Paltrow concluded. “I wish I had done that sooner.”
Falchuk, 51, praised his wife for being a “spectacular” stepmother and developing a relationship with Isabella and Brody “beyond” him.
“They talk to you all the time, they come to you all the time for advice, they rely on you,” explained the co-creator of “Glee.”
Falchuk also called Paltrow’s ex-husband, Chris Martin, a “great father” to Apple and Moses.
“He loves them and spends time with them and all that sort of thing,” the producer told listeners of the 45-year-old Coldplay frontman, noting that that’s why he “doesn’t have to be their father.”
He clarified: “All I have to do is just be ‘daddy’ when I’m the father in the house.”
Paltrow and Falchuk married in September 2018, two years after the Oscar winner and Martin’s divorce was finalized.
The newlyweds waited almost a year to move their blended family into one house after marriage.
The creator of Goop explained their reluctance to “merge” immediately during a “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” interview and said: “We each have two teenage children whom we love very much.
“We were just trying to be mindful and give them a little space and not move too fast.”