Gwyneth Paltrow had a shaky start to stepparenting.
The actress spoke with her husband, Brad Falchuk, on Tuesday’s episode of her “Goop” podcast about her biggest “regret” helping raise his two kids from a previous marriage.
“I came onto it on tenterhooks,” the Emmy winner said, explaining that she had no “playbook” for the role beside the “archetypal evil stepmother” portrayal in 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, no longer felt scared to “love” or “discipline” Isabella, 18, and Brody, 16, alongside her own two children of the same ages, Apple and Moses.
“If someone asked me for advice on it, I would just say from day one, just really treat them as your kid,” Paltrow concluded. “I just wish I had done that earlier.”
Falchuk, 51, praised his wife for being a “spectacular” stepmom and developing a relationship with Isabella and Brody “outside of” him.
“They talk to you all the time, they come to you for advice all the time, they rely on you,” the “Glee” co-creator explained.
Falchuk also called Paltrow’s ex-husband, Chris Martin, a “great dad” to Apple and Moses.
“He loves them and spends time with them and all that stuff,” the producer told listeners of the 45-year-old Coldplay frontman, noting that he, therefore, “doesn’t have to be their dad.”
He clarified, “All I have to do is just be ‘dad’ when I’m the dad in the house.”
Paltrow and Falchuk wed in September 2018, two years after the Oscar winner and Martin’s divorce was finalized.
The newlyweds waited nearly a year to move their blended family into one home after the nuptials.
The Goop creator explained their hesitation to immediately “merge” during an October 2019 “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” interview, saying, “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 quickly.”