The Internet Can't Get Enough Of The New Martha Stewart Documentary; These Are The 20 Most Mind-Boggling Things I Learned After Watching It Myself
In case you somehow missed it, Netflix just dropped a buzzy new documentary about Martha Stewart's life, aptly titled Martha. In the doc, Martha gets extremely candid about every aspect of her life thus far — from her relationship woes to her infamous 2004 "insider trading" trial — and the internet can't get enough of it.
Martha didn't hold anything back for this one.
People found themselves reexamining their preconceived notions of Martha and the drama that seemed to follow her wherever she went.
Basically, the doc gave Martha her flowers. (Finally.)
But as soft, fragrant, and perfectly arranged as those metaphorical flowers were (on par with those of her personal greenhouse, TBH), the doc wasn't without its fair share of spicy revelations. So after watching Martha for myself, these are the facts and secrets I can't get out of my own head.
1.Martha had a strained relationship with her father, Edward Kostyra. Though she says that he loved her and ultimately was the one to teach her how to garden — and it was obvious to those around them that Martha was his favorite amongst his six children — his actions were troubling.
Though she doesn't peg him as an alcoholic, Martha admits that he often started his day with a "large glass of coffee and red wine." Things came to a head when her now-ex, Andy Stewart, proposed to her when she was 19; when Martha told her father, he slapped her hard across the face and told her that she couldn't marry Andy because he was Jewish.
2.Martha attributes the beginnings of her interest in food, culture, architecture, and design to the "eye-opening" five-month (!) European honeymoon she went on with Andy after the two were married. While on the trip, she documented every single thing she ate, drank, and did, and she remembers feeling like she wanted to spend the rest of her life exploring these aspects of culture.
3.While visiting Florence on her honeymoon, she kissed a stranger in the Duomo because of how "emotional the moment was."
However, when asked by one of the producers if she felt "naughty" for sneaking a kiss on her honeymoon, she doesn't admit any guilt, instead stating that it was merely a spontaneous, "exciting" moment thanks to how beautiful the space was — and that she wishes everyone could experience a moment like that.
4.When her daughter Alexis was born, Martha found motherhood "unnatural." Her friend Kathy says that Martha had a hard time adapting to the realities of motherhood, and was happiest when Alexis would go down for a nap so she could be on her own.
5.Martha shmoozed with a whole lot of rich people throughout her life and career — and she chalks up her ability to behave around billionaires to the time that she spent as a stockbroker on Wall Street in her early 20s. According to Martha, she was the only woman at her firm, and despite having to ward off unwanted advances from the men she was surrounded with, she "learned a lot at that firm."
6.Martha and Andy's first house in Connecticut, where she notably launched her uber-successful catering business that paved the way for her career, also came with its fair share of marital strife. Martha alludes to Andy having "multiple girlfriends" during their time in that house.
On the subject of husbands cheating, Martha offers a message to the women viewing the documentary.
7.On the subject of cheating, however, Martha also addresses an affair that she had early on with a "very attractive Irishman." When the producer brings it up, she says that Andy never knew about it, though apparently, he told the producer that he did know — and never cheated on her until Martha opened up to him about her own affair. (Martha says that his claim isn't true.)
She recounts the affair as "nothing," adding that she would've never broken up her marriage for it.
8.Martha was "discovered" when she was catering a book party for Andy, who was a publishing executive. One of the other publishers in attendance told her that she should write a book on entertaining. This ultimately led to the release of her first book, Entertaining, which was published in 1982 — and has been legendary ever since.
9.The end of Martha's time at her Connecticut home with Andy was dark, with a friend of Martha's describing her relationship with Andy as "strained." She was overly critical of him, and Andy was distant and reluctant to be a bigger part of her rapidly expanding career. Andy started an affair with one of Martha's employees while she was traveling — who she allowed to live on their property in an apartment they kept.
She says it was "like [she] put out a snack for Andy," and she immediately kicked the staff member out. "Andy betrayed me, right on our property," she said. Ultimately, the entire ordeal brought Martha tons of stress and anxiety, especially as she embarked on her press tour for her book, Weddings. She penned numerous letters to Andy during this time, reprimanding him for his actions and even detailing suicidal thoughts in the wake of his betrayal.
10.When Martha first launched her collection of products at Kmart in 1997, she had multiple appearances canceled due to the store being seen as "down-scale" at the time; she even had her country club membership revoked. Despite it all, Martha knew how important it was to have a mass-market deal for the future of her business, so she trudged forward and kept her product line until 2009.
11.When Martha crafted her idea for a living-focused magazine — eventually titled Martha Stewart Living — she first shopped the idea to Condé Nast and Rupert Murdoch, who both passed. Eventually, she landed with Time, whose "men's club" leadership was initially unimpressed with the idea, but was swayed by Martha's pitch that "living is limitless," providing the runway for hundreds and thousands of issues covering all aspects of home, food, and lifestyle.
Once Martha was ready to form her own company — Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia — she singlehandedly bought her magazine back from Time using the advance from her Kmart deal.
12.You might already know this, so if so, it still bears repeating: At the very top of her company's success, Martha's stock options were worth $1.2 billion, which made her the first female self-made billionaire in American history. According to Martha, this was the moment that people finally "started to take [her] seriously."
13.Martha detailed her battle with the US Attorney's office (and James Comey, in particular) in the lead-up to her trial for obstruction of justice related to her insider trading scandal. According to Martha, she was a "trophy" for Comey, who relentlessly pursued an investigation against her for whatever he could get when the case for insider trading alone didn't hold up.
Maybe I'm alone here, but this bit was news to me: The infamous offloading of ImClone stock that landed her in hot water in the first place would've made her just over $40,000 in capital gains.
14.One of the most pivotal moments of Martha's extremely public 2004 trial was when her longtime best friend, Mariana Pasternak, testified against her. Twenty years later, in the doc, Martha admitted to being "very sad" hearing Mariana's words that day, calling her a "damaged woman" who was told exactly what to say to help lead the case toward her ultimate conviction.
15.Martha recounts the moment her guilty verdict was read at the trial, noting that the "New York Post lady" was there, "looking so smug." She's referring to Andrea Peyser, a Post columnist who wrote numerous articles openly criticizing Martha throughout her trial, referring to her as the "queen of control freaks" and an "ill-mannered dominatrix," among other things. "She's dead now, thank goodness," she says.
Plot twist: It appears as if Martha inaccurately killed Peyser off in her mind, as the columnist is, in fact, very much alive today. She wrote an article just the other day reigniting their feud with the headline: "Hey Martha Stewart, you gloated about the death of a Post columnist — but I’m alive, bitch!"
16.While serving her five-month prison sentence at Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia, Martha was once put into solitary confinement for a day as punishment for "touching an officer." According to Martha, she merely told the officer that their chain looked good and swiped by it, accidentally touching them. In solitary confinement, she was given no food and no water. She says that while Alderson was commonly referred to as "Camp Cupcake," it was certainly no "cupcake," in her experience.
17.Martha's boyfriend at the time of her sentence, Charles Simonyi (inventor of Microsoft Word and Excel), only visited her once during her 150 days in prison. She says that he "didn't like hanging out with someone who was in prison," and when the two eventually split in 2008 when he abruptly told her he was going to marry someone else, Martha described the breakup as a second divorce. "What a stupid thing to do to someone you care about," she said.
18.Toward the end of her time at Alderson, Martha taught business classes to the other women, encouraging them to be entrepreneurs if they had good ideas. One of her friends from prison said that Martha had a "profound effect on her" and the other women through her friendship and teachings. When she was released from prison, she even wore a poncho that was gifted to her by one of the "best craftspeople" she met inside Alderson.
19.As part of Martha's return to the public eye, she found herself heading up her very own daytime television show, The Martha Stewart Show, with Mark Burnett at the helm — the creator of The Apprentice and Survivor, as well as numerous other titles. In the doc, Martha claims that Burnett's show "missed the point" of Martha Stewart, and described the "live audience and crummy music" as "more like prison" than her actual time at Alderson.
20.And finally: During her legendary roast of Justin Bieber as part of Comedy Central's special of the same name, Martha admits that she and her team didn't know how hard they would sling against her — but nonetheless, she delivered (and then some) in an epic performance that thrust her back into the public eye for all the right reasons. In fact, her daughter Alexis told her to watch a roast ahead of time to prepare. She didn't.
If that's not true comedy chops...IDK what is.
You can stream Martha on Netflix.