We speak to queer production duo Linus Karp and Joseph Martin ahead of the debut of their new theatre show, Gwyneth Goes Skiing
Nothing screams “camp as Christmas” like Gwyneth Goes Skiing, a new play based on Gwyneth Paltrow’s ski crash court case. It wasn’t quite the trial of the century, but it was a welcome distraction from everyday life that kept the internet in memes for days. When Paltrow was asked what she lost following the collision on upscale Utah slope, she replied drily: “Well, I lost half a day of skiing.”
As you’ll recall, the Oscar-winning actress and Goop curator thrilled the internet in March by rocking up to court looking every inch the woman of wealth and taste. Terry Sanderson, a retired eye doctor, was suing her for $300,000 because he alleged he was left with life-altering injuries following their 2016 ski crash. After hearing eight days of evidence, a jury unanimously concluded that Sanderson was at fault in the collision, which entitled Paltrow to the symbolic single dollar she had counter-sued for. It was all so delicious that her damages really should have come with a nail polish emoji.
Gwyneth Goes Skiing, which opens at London’s Pleasance Theatre on December 13, becomes even more irresistible when you clock its creative team. It’s the brainchild of Awkward Productions’ Linus Karp and Joseph Martin, the self-styled “harbingers of queer chaos” behind Edinburgh Fringe hits Diana: The Untold & Untrue Story and How to Live a Jellicle Life. Martin says their pitch to the Pleasance was pretty straightforward given their previous shows riffed on the People’s Princess and 2019’s disastrous Cats movie. “We were like, ‘You know our brand of chaotic, joyful, silly, queer theatre,’” he recalls. “Now Linus is going to play Gwyneth Paltrow and I’m going to play a 76-year-old retired optometrist. They got it straight away.”
When Gwyneth Goes Skiing was announced in November, it was widely described in the press as a “musical”. Actually, Martin says it’s more accurate to call it a “play with music”. Leland, Troye Sivan’s co-writer and the in-house music guru on RuPaul’s Drag Race, has written “three-and-a-half songs” that punctuate the courtroom drama. Leland says that when a victorious Paltrow approached Sanderson at the end of the trial and whispered “I wish you well”, “alarm bells started going off” in his head. He has turned this gloriously shady-slash-gracious gesture into an “uptempo power ballad” equally inspired by Swedish Eurovision songs and John Cameron Mitchell’s cult rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch. No one has heard it yet, but “I Wish You Well” already sounds like a gay bar anthem.
“You can tell if someone gets it or not, and [Paltrow] just gets it. She continues to drop little cultural gifts for gays to latch onto. I feel she’s like a queer magnet of sorts” – Leland
Leland met Karp and Martin at the Edinburgh Festival in August when they grabbed a quick dinner between performances of Diana: The Untold & Untrue Story. When the stage duo shared their intention to turn the Paltrow trial into a splashy performance piece, Leland was able to say “snap!” because he already thought it had the makings of a Drag Race “Rusical” parody. Gwyneth Goes Skiing has come together pretty quickly for a play, but Leland says the process has almost felt luxurious compared to his Drag Race schedule. “I’m used to putting together a musical in three-and-a-half weeks from inception to the time it’s filmed,” he says. “So when they said, ‘We’ve got six weeks’, I was like, ‘Amazing!’”
Karp readily admits that he and Martin “watched hours and hours of court footage” to make sure their script draws from the entire case, not just most meme-worthy moments such as Paltrow being asked whether she is “good friends” with Taylor Swift. “I would not say we are ‘good friends’,” Paltrow told the court. “We are friendly. I’ve taken my kids to one of her concerts before, but we don’t talk very often.” Immersing themselves in the trial also enabled Karp and Martin to figure out their take on Sanderson, a character the audience will know very little about. “There are bits in his daughter’s testimony where she essentially testifies against him,” Martin says. “She says that her father compared Gwyneth to Godzilla, but when he’s asked about this later, he says: ‘No, absolutely not – I do not remember that.’ That is just inherently camp.”
Each performance will conclude with the audience being asked who they believe: the Goop entrepreneur or her eye doctor rival. “I mean, I’m playing Gwyneth, so I’d be upset if people didn’t vote with me,” Karp says playfully. Initially, Martin says they really tried to “humanise” Sanderson to dissolve Paltrow’s natural advantage and make him more relatable. “Then we thought it would be more fun to go the other way and make him a bumbling idiot,” he continues. “And now we’ve found a nice middle-ground, so I think the audience will have a bit of a quandary when it comes to voting for who they want to win.”
Whatever the result on the night, all three creatives believe the play cements Paltrow’s place in the camp pantheon. Martin points out that anyone who creates a wax product called “This Candle Smells Like Vagina” must have a healthy sense of self-awareness. “You can tell if someone gets it or not, and she just gets it,” Leland says. “She continues to drop little cultural gifts for gays to latch onto. I feel she’s like a queer magnet of sorts.” When the play was announced, a friend who also knows Paltrow told Leland: “I can’t wait for Gwyneth to hear about this because she is going to find it hilarious.”
Karp says the play “makes points about celebrity and differing versions of events”, but is ultimately meant to provide a big gay blast of festive escapism. “So many queer stories told on stage and in film are about homophobia or conversion therapy – and that’s very valid because those stories need to be told,” he says. “But it’s also important to create shows that really centre queer joy, especially at the moment when there’s so much anti-queer rhetoric around.” So, given that Paltrow will probably be in on the joke, is she also invited to the party? “Oh definitely!” Martin says. “If she wants to come, we will welcome her with open arms and freshly steamed vaginas.”
Gwyneth Goes Skiing runs from December 13 to 23 at the Pleasance Theatre. Tickets are available here.