When I say “ping-pong” what’s the first thing that pops into your head? If you answered, “A lot of sex,” then congratulations – you’re the exact target audience for Josh Safdie’s new film, starring Timothée Chalamet and Gwyneth Paltrow. If not... you’re about to learn a lot about the humble sport of table tennis.

In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Paltrow discussed her starring role alongside Young Wonka in the upcoming Marty Supreme. In the film, he plays Marty Mauser, a ping-pong star based on the US champion Marty Reisman, and she plays the wife of a rival professional. Despite this professional being “in the Ping-Pong mafia, as it were,” Mauser begins an affair with Paltrow’s character, resulting in the paparazzi shot that solidified 2024’s Age Gap Autumn (or whatever we were calling it).

“They meet and she’s had a pretty tough life, and I think he breathes life back into her,” Paltrow says of the pair’s relationship. “But it’s kind of transactional for them both.”

Transactional it may be, but apparently that doesn’t stop them from having a good time while they’re at it. “I mean, we have a lot of sex in this movie,” Paltrow continues. “There’s a lot – a lot.” And the scenes go “beyond” vulnerability, she adds.

Apparently, no one told Paltrow about the controversy surrounding Anora’s lack of an intimacy coordinator, either (or she just doesn’t care – Anora won five Oscars, after all). Later in the interview, she explains that she didn’t know the job role even existed, despite being a key player in the #MeToo movement that led to its prevalence in the industry. When asked if she was comfortable performing a particular move in a NSFW scene during the filming of Marty Supreme, she explains: “I was like, ‘Girl, I’m from the era where you get naked, you get in bed, the camera’s on.’”

Chalamet was seemingly on board to ditch the intimacy coordinator as well. “We said, ‘I think we’re good, you can step a little bit back,’” Paltrow goes on. “I don’t know how it is for kids who are starting out, but… if someone is like, ‘OK, and then he’s going to put his hand here,’  I would feel, as an artist, very stifled by that.”

That isn’t to say there was no communication on set. Before filming their more intimate scenes together, Paltrow jokes that she told Chalamet: “I was like, ‘OK, great. I’m 109 years old. You’re 14.’”

Elsewhere in the interview, she calls Chalamet “a thinking man’s sex symbol,” which feels less complimentary than it should? “He’s just a very polite, properly raised, I was going to say kid,” she adds. “He’s a man who takes his work really seriously and is a fun partner.”