Strangers Author Belle Burden Teases Upcoming Gwyneth Paltrow Movie

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Belle Burden has the goop scoop about Gwyneth Paltrow’s newest role.

Just three months after Burden’s memoir Strangers was released, it was confirmed that her best-seller about the sudden end to her two-decade marriage and her journey through heartbreak would be coming to life on Netflix—with Paltrow stepping in to play the author. And that is a reality Burden is still wrapping her head around.

“We met in person, and we also met over Zoom, and I just think she's wonderful,” she told E! News in an exclusive interview at Amazon Books’ Literary Lounge event celebrating Amazon’s Best Books of the Year So Far on June 10. “She really understood the book, she really connected with it emotionally, and I think she'll take great care of it.”

That the Strangers movie also marks Paltrow’s first starring role in well over a decade—her last lead role was 2010’s Country Strong—is not lost on her.

“I think it's so exciting that she's returning to acting,” Burden emphasized. “I thought she was amazing in Marty Supreme, so I'm really excited about her playing the part. It's a great honor, really. I can't quite believe that she is playing me.”

For the 56-year-old, this whole experience surrounding Strangers has been a whirlwind—and not just because she had anticipated a “quiet” release. In fact, there was a time when detailing her painful breakup in a 2023 New York Times Modern Love essay was the furthest she expected to share her story.

“After it came out, two editors contacted me and said, ‘This should be a book,’” recalled Burden, noting that, at the time, a confidante’s reaction was, “‘Well, you're not going to do that. The Modern Love is enough, right? You're stopping now.’”

Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage

In this New York Times bestseller, author Belle Burden revisits the love and loss of her 20 marriage and subsequent heartbreak. Read it before it hits the small screen.

@Oprah/TikTok; Photo by Stephane Cardinale - Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images

“I was like, ‘No, actually, I'm going to write a book. I have so much more to say,’” she continued, “and I realized in that moment that I really, really wanted to write a book—a full-length piece about this experience.”

And the timing ended up being kismet for the mom of three.

“I think I started writing at exactly the right point, because I had some distance from it to have some perspective,” she noted, “but I also was close enough that I could feel the emotions and remember the details and the sort of texture of that time.”

Beyond diving deep into “how you structure a book, and how you build suspense and create characters,” Burden found a way to articulate her truth without letting the outside noise in.

“I think the hardest part of it really is to write without fear and not think so much about how individual people are going to receive it—especially people who are in the book—and worry about that later,” she explained. "So, I really tried to put fear aside, and it was emotional—the whole process was emotional—but I also enjoyed it.”

The Oprah Podcast/YouTube

In the six years since her then-husband—the pseudonym James in the book is for her ex Henry Davis—abruptly announced during the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown that he wanted a divorce, Burden has been able to turn over the devastating events and find a cathartic point of clarity.

“It was so painful, and I wanted more than anything in life to have an intact family,” she told E!. “I was very much in love with my husband, so it feels really surprising to say this, but I am glad it happened, because I would never be in this place.”

And, Burden shared, “I would never have discovered myself as a writer again. I would never be in charge of my life in the same way—having financial autonomy, just feeling very sure in my personality, having this strength that I really did not know was there. So, I'm grateful for it now.”

Although it may be a cliché, she emphasized that it’s true, “Sometimes everything has to fall apart in order to really create something new.”

Among that something new for Burden is a place at No. 4 on Amazon’s Best Books of the Year so Far list. “It's really humbling and exciting and wonderful to hear from readers around the world that they see themselves in the book in some way,” she said. “And to be added to this list in the company of other authors on this list is so wonderful. I'm really honored.”

That fans can’t get enough of her memoir means even more as Burden admitted there was one key element that left her worried about people feeling “unsatisfied.”

“I don't find an answer, really. My ex-husband does not provide one, and I don't find one, and we worried about that,” she explained, adding how she now sees the benefit in that lack of a clean conclusion. “I think that's a piece that people really connect to, because I think in life, often in relationships or friendships, you don't get an answer as to why they end, and I think that that resonates with people.”

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