Movie star Gwyneth Paltrow has gone viral many times over, for things like jade egg debacles and selling vagina-scented candles, but it’s her much-memed viral skiing lawsuit that has spawned a musical satire.
This past March, the goop founder stood trial in a civil suit that stemmed from a 2016 ski-slope collision with Terry Sanderson. Now that crash and subsequent litigation is fodder for a satirical stage adaptation called Gwyneth Goes Skiing.
The Pleasance Theater in London just announced the new musical on Instagram with an official synopsis that reads: “She’s the goop-founding, door-sliding, Shakespeare-in-loving, consciously uncoupling Hollywood superstar. He’s a retired optometrist from Utah. In 2016, they went skiing. On the slopes of Deer Valley, their worlds collided, and so did they — literally. Ouch. Seven years later in 2023, they went to court. Double ouch. This is their story. Kind of. Not really."
The new musical is set to open on December 13 for a 10-day run and stars Linus Karp as the Oscar-winning actress and Joseph Martin as the retired optometrist who claimed she ran into him. It will also feature original music from Leland, the singer-songwriter known for working with Cher, Troye Sivan, and Selena Gomez, and as the songwriter for RuPaul’s Drag Race.
"We are Gooped at the amazing reception for Gwyneth Goes Skiing," Karp and Martin said in a statement to Entertainment Weekly. "We're having so much fun putting the show together. It's going to be beyond ridiculous and absolutely wild. See you in court."
The play draws inspiration from the $300,000 lawsuit Sanderson brought against Paltrow in which he claimed the wellness guru crashed into the 72-year-old man at a Salt Lake City, Utah, ski resort in 2016. The collision left Sanderson with four broken ribs, a concussion, and brain damage, but the jury sided with Paltrow, deciding she wasn’t at fault, according to NBC News.
