Lloyd Bishop/NBC
Gwyneth Paltrow‘s vagina candle is still the only thing people can talk about.
On Wednesday, the Goop founder set the record straight on the brand’s ”This Smells Like My Vagina” candle on Late Night with Seth Meyers, revealing that she didn’t originally intend for the controversial candle’s name to be on the final product.
“It sort of started as a joke,” she told host Seth Meyers. “I was with ‘The Nose’ Douglas Little…and we were kind of messing around. And I smelled this beautiful thing and I was like, ‘This smells like my vagina.’ And I was kidding, obviously.”
Despite her intentions, the joke ended up being a surprisingly enticing name for Goop’s newest innovation. She added, “It actually became a really funny thing where it was, A: Really funny to us, but also a little bit punk rock.”
In addition to creating buzz around the new launch, Gwyneth also noted that she hopes it will serve as an empowering message of body acceptance as well. “And, you know, I think women, a lot of have grown up feeling certain degrees of shame around or body, or whatever,” she continued. “So, this is just a little bit of a, you know, subversive candle for all of us out there.”
While the late night host was quick to applaud Gwyneth for the boundary-pushing name, other stars haven’t shown the new candle quite the same warmth. Last week, Martha Stewart seemingly shaded the Avengers: Endgame star’s product during her visit to Watch What Happens Live.
“She does that kind of irritatingly—she’s trying to zhuzh up the public to listen to her and that’s great. Let her do her thing,” she told Andy Cohen. “I’m sure it sold out.”
After saying she wouldn’t necessarily be buying the candle, the Snoop & Martha star weighed in on the demographic that would be. “I think it’s a lot of guys who are horny.”
But as always, Gwyneth isn’t letting the haters get her down. In the promotional images for her new Netflix series The Goop Lab, she can be seen standing in the middle of a pink set that resembles a vagina. Staying on theme with her latest launch, the tagline reads, “Reach new depths.”
For her upcoming show, the wellness enthusiast and her Goop staff will explore a variety of topics in mental, physical, spiritual and sexual health.
During her Late Night visit, the Oscar winner also provided more insight on how she and her team decide the theme for each episode—starting with the psychedelic one where the Goop squad drank mushroom tea to better understand its abilities to help those diagnosed with PTSD.
“We were really fascinated by…this idea that’s very disruptive and new,” she said. “Like, can—if you take a psychedelic with a psychiatrist and it’s the right set and the right setting, like, is it, does it have potential for great healing? So, we wanted to test it out for ourselves.”
She also provided more insight on what sparked her desire to get into the wellness space with Goop in the first place.
“I started it because I was really looking for a place on the Internet where I could find great information about, not only health but, like, emerging wellness modalities,” she shared. “I feel, like, myself and my friends, we wanted a little bit more agency over our health and we wanted to understand, like, ‘Why do we feel better when we eat cleaner?’ Or, you know, ‘Do saunas work?’ And, ‘Does acupuncture work?'”
She continued, “This was like 11 years ago…it all sounds kind of obvious but at the time it was kind of a nascent concept. And so, I think there were a lot of people in the world who are really interested in optimizing themselves, their bodies, their sex lives, their marriages, their relationships with their kids…We’re living in this age now we have all this great information and resources available to us.”
Watch Gwyneth set the record straight on the vagina candle’s origin story and talk all things Goop in the video above!
(E! and NBC are both part of the NBCUniversal Family.)
Watch E! News weekday mornings at 7 a.m.!