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With a beaming smile and her arm draped around Dakota Johnson’s shoulder, last week Gwyneth Paltrow looked for all the world like she was posing for a photo with one of her oldest friends. Only, she was actually arm-in-arm with her ex-husband Chris Martin’s girlfriend, a woman she has been rumoured to have been keen to distance herself from since he started dating her in October 2017.
Gwyneth and Dakota were publicly photographed together for the first time last Wednesday, during a birthday dinner in LA for socialite and journalist Derek Blasberg. He posted it on Instagram with the caption: ‘Consciously throupling’, a cheeky nod to Gwyneth and Chris’s infamous 2014 split statement.
According to sources, the timing of the picture is deliberate, as Gwyneth, 46, finally feels happy to make a public statement of her new friendship with Fifty Shades Of Grey actress Dakota, 29 – or, as we like to describe it – their ‘consciously co-existing’.
‘Gwyneth and Dakota haven’t always seen eye to eye – it’s taken a while for them to forge a friendship,’ says the source. ‘For the first year of Dakota’s relationship with Chris, it was pretty prickly between them. There’s bound to be wariness between a mother and a new person entering their family; Gwyneth wanted to be sure Dakota was the right fit.’
It’s thought that Chris, 42, and Gwyneth’s famously well-maintained and unusually close relationship – extended to include Gwyneth’s husband, producer Brad Falchuk – didn’t always leave a lot of room for Dakota. ‘Brad, Gwyneth and Chris have the best co-parenting set-up: they walk into one another’s houses unannounced, they holiday together, they eat together. But they were lucky that Brad and Chris always got on so well and only wanted the best for Moses and Apple,’ says the source.
Things changed after Gwyneth and Brad’s wedding in the Hamptons in September. ‘Neither Chris or Dakota attended the wedding and there were reports that Dakota had been actively “banned”,’ says the source, which led to rumours this had caused a falling-out between the two couples.
Since then, though, sources say Gwyneth and Dakota have been spending important family time together, including Thanksgiving and a ‘family honeymoon’ with the children to the Maldives over Christmas. ‘This was what bonded them together the most,’ said the source.
Gwyneth has been very open about her desire to build a big, as she calls it, ‘modern family’. She regularly posts pictures of Chris and Brad together, and Grazia’s source says the pair are very close friends.
In 2016, Gwyneth said of her relationship with Chris, ‘We’re still very much a family, even though we don’t have a romantic relationship. He’s like my brother.’
Now, says the source, Dakota and Gwyneth are forging a bond that transcends their positions as Chris’s former and present significant other. ‘Gwyneth has started to take Dakota under her wing and mentor her,’ the insider reveals. ‘There was a time when perhaps Gwyneth might have winced at the idea of Chris being with a younger actress – she was never a huge fan of his ex, Jennifer Lawrence. But things are different now. She admires Dakota’s professionalism and maturity.’
Dakota and Chris, for their part, are going from strength to strength. She spoke about Chris recently for the first time, saying she was ‘very happy’ with him. They now live together in Chris’s Malibu mansion (20 minutes from Gwyneth and Brad’s place), and there have been rumours that marriage could be on the cards.
‘Chris never thought he’d feel so strongly about anyone again after Gwyneth, but it’s getting really serious with Dakota. Now that she and Gwyneth are in such a great place, it is even more solid.’