In a new documentary exploring the homemaking superstar’s life, career, and highly publicized stock trading scandal, Stewart may not always be forthcoming, but she’s always candid
Martha sells itself. The new documentary, which premiered yesterday on Netflix, promises a candid view of Martha Stewart’s life. Of course, everyone wants to know what “the first female, self-made billionaire in history” is really like. Is she as perfect as she seems? Is the whole Snoop Dogg friendship an act?
The documentary begins with Stewart’s childhood in Nutley, New Jersey, and follows her through modeling, stockbroking, marriage, and catering. We see her marriage fall apart, her career ventures take off, her company go public. Then, it all comes crashing down as she is convicted of lying to the FBI about stock trading, and spends 150 days in prison. Through it all, Stewart indeed appears honest about her life, even if a producer or two chimes in occasionally to fact-check a few claims here and there. Here are seven moments where the homemaking superstar, perhaps, shows us who she really is.
“I had never slept with anybody before this. He was very aggressive, and I liked it.”
Stewart married Andy Stewart when she was 19, having been introduced by a mutual friend in college. As a photograph of young Stewart in bed, topless and face down with tousled hair, glides across the screen, she offers a glimpse at what transformed her initial attraction into a fiery marriage with a “nice guy.” Later, she confesses to kissing someone else while on their honeymoon, and that both she and Andy had affairs during their marriage, her with a “very attractive Irish man.”
“When you tell me that this is no longer your home, after all we did here together, why shouldn’t I say I’m going to burn it down?”
As Stewart’s career took off, her marriage was imploding. Eventually, she and Andy would divorce, ending 27 years of marriage after he began an affair with one of Stewart’s assistants — all while Stewart was promoting her book Weddings by Martha Stewart, an extra twist of the knife. “Some people revel in this self-pity, etc., etc. I just don’t,” Stewart tells producers in the documentary, instructing them to take evidence of her pain out of letters she had written at the time. This line comes from one of them.
“It doesn’t interest me so much to know ‘Oh Charles, how do you feel this second?’ I don’t care actually.”
A throughline of the documentary is Stewart’s difficulty with expressing emotions. She admits parenthood was hard for her, and that she came from a rather cold household. She posits that this is why she hasn’t had many romantic relationships — after her divorce, she dated billionaire Charles Simonyi for 15 years, until, according to Stewart, he said he was going to marry someone else. She shrugs at her disinterest in feelings, saying she is more interested in what people do.
“Those prosecutors should have been put in a Cuisinart turned on high.”
Many documentaries have recently attempted to redeem the reputations of famous women from the ’90s and early 2000s. Cultural analysts ask viewers to rethink their assumptions about Britney Spears, Monica Lewinsky, and Paris Hilton, and to see them as victims of abusive industries who were long held to impossible standards that male counterparts weren’t. But that doesn’t mean Stewart was without agency. A significant portion of the documentary is focused on convincing the audience Stewart’s conviction and imprisonment was unjust, that she was unfairly targeted — specifically by James Comey, the lead prosecutor of her case — because she was a successful woman, and that she never lied to the FBI when she said she hadn’t been tipped off about a stock trade. We may never know the truth, but we know exactly what Stewart thinks of the men who ultimately put her in prison.
“Isn’t that a stupid knife.”
In between her conviction and sentencing, Stewart invited a camera crew into her home to watch her prep for an Easter party. Throughout Martha, friends and colleagues note that Stewart could be abrasive, abusive, and cruel to staff and coworkers — something they all take pains to remind us is acceptable behavior in successful men — in her pursuit of needing everything done “right.” In a candid moment she quickly demands not be filmed, we watch her berate an assistant for using a too-small knife to cut an orange, questioning why she’d ever dream of using a knife like that. It’s a moment that demonstrates most candidly how brutal working under Stewart could be, revealing what the perfectionism Stewart built her brand on cost.
“I have two mottos. One is learn something new every day, and the second one is when you’re through changing, you’re through.”
Well before Stewart’s sentence begins, the damage to her business is evident: Advertisers flee from the magazine, stock prices plummet. After Stewart gets out of prison, she finds her career has tanked. She is understandably depressed. But in classic Martha fashion, she doesn’t dwell on her feelings and figures out how to move forward. Rather than being a billionaire, this is what’s actually inspiring about Stewart: her dedication to trying something new, even in the face of adversity.
“I think imperfection is something that you can deal with.”
Stewart jokes that as she’s gotten older, she’s learned to deal with imperfections — or just, things not going her way — better than she did when she was younger. It’s good to know that even Martha Stewart is capable of finding peace in certain flaws. Then again, Stewart had plenty of issues with the documentary itself. So, don’t mistake this for her going soft.
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