Vanity Fair Editor Graydon Carter Finally Addresses the Gwyneth Paltrow ‘Takedown’ Piece

Will this never-ending drama just come to a close already?

Since last summer, after an alleged kerfuffle with polarizing star Gwyneth Paltrow, Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter has supposedly been poised to publish an all-out takedown of Gwynnie, reported to include unsavory details about her personal life (read: cheating was involved) that would surely turn everyone in the world against her. The rumors came to a head yesterday, when Vanity Fair released the March Hollywood Issue cover, including the headline “Goop, Gossip, and Gwyneth by Graydon Carter.”

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Now, VF  has published an excerpt from Carter’s editor’s letter to its website, tackling the rumors head-on. Carter largely tip-toes around the issue, using diplomatic wording that’ll probably bore everyone to death so they’ll just drop the rumors completely. Here’s a snippet:

[Writer Vanessa Grigoriadis turned in] was just what had been assigned—a reasoned, reported essay on the hate/love-fest that encircles Gwyneth Paltrow. I thought it perfectly explained the whole phenomenon. But it was such a far cry from the almost mythical story that people were by now expecting—the “epic takedown,” filled with “bombshell” revelations—that it was bound to be a disappointment. What to do? I decided to sit on it for a time.

In October, Gwyneth called me. We talked for about 20 minutes about the story and her reaction, or over-reaction, to it. At one point, she asked my advice as to what to do to get the “haters” on her side. I suggested putting on 15 pounds. I joked that it works for me. She replied I had put on much more than that. Which I thought was fair and funny.

There you have it. Carter got a decent middle-of-the-road story from one of his writers that didn’t meet the public’s wildly egregious expectations for celebrity gossip, so he “decided to sit on it,” presumably for publicity purposes (it worked!)

MORE: Why Vanity Fair’s ‘Gwyneth Takedown Piece’ Hasn’t Run

Head over to VanityFair.com to read the rest of the excerpt, which appears in full in the March issue on stands February 11. As for us, we’re officially over this whole situation. Curtain down.