NEWSDid Gwyneth Steal GOOP Idea?
March 5 2009, Published 1:01 p.m. ET
It was bound to happen. Gwyneth Paltrow's weekly newsletter, GOOP.com, has been getting so much press (mostly negative) lately that this almost doesn't come as a surprise.
The New York Post is reporting that a Columbia-based writer claims the Oscar winning actress copied her idea for a weekly "lifestyle" newsletter. Mary Kent Hearon says Gwyneth's GOOP is a copycat version of her website, WeeklyBeet.com, which she started in 2004.
Hearon, 34, an artist, writer and nutritionist, says she attended school with Gwyneth's best friend at Trinity College. Through that connection, she landed a meeting with the actress in a London restaurant in order to pitch her own website, the WeeklyBeet.
Gwyneth's camp denies the accusations, according to the Post's Page Six.
Hearon released a statement in which she says, "I am shocked that someone whom I looked up to and so admired for her openness about alternative medicine, a) treated me very rudely, and b) proceeded to produce a concept which, in my opinion, is similar to The Beet, especially after being asked to bless mine. That to me is not light!"
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Asked what she would do now, Hearon said she would “keep doing the Beet, that’s what I do.”
