No matter who you think Martha Stewart is — celebrated homemaker, America’s first self-made female billionaire, close personal friend to Snoop Dogg, or even the queen of Instagram selfies — there’s more to her story.
For more than 50 years, Stewart has shaped our culture in both big and small ways, from teaching her millions of acolytes how to properly fold a fitted sheet to challenging entrenched ideas about the value of domestic work. So, to borrow her own phrase, it’s a good thing the new documentary –– simply titled Martha –– covers the breadth of her extraordinary life through intimate interviews with Stewart herself, who opened up her personal archives to share never-before-seen photos, letters, and diary entries.
“I have two mottos. One is: Learn something new every day. And the second one is: When you’re through changing, you’re through,” Stewart says in the film about her guiding philosophy. “Change that garden if you don’t like it. Rip it out and you start all over again.”
For director R.J. Cutler (Elton John: Never Too Late, Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry, The September Issue), the project was a chance to recontextualize an American icon at a pivotal moment in her journey.
“I got this sense of just how much Martha was a personification of her times and such an American success story. It was clear to me that she was thinking about telling her life story in some form, and it wasn’t hard to imagine that there was a life-and-times movie to be made that explored why Martha has been such a significant cultural and business figure for so many decades in so many ways,” Cutler told Netflix. “I started reading about Martha and the more I did, the more it became clear to me that she was a complex person filled with so many conflicts and contradictions. And the more I learned about her, the more excited I became about the possibility of digging deeper into her story.”
This definitive documentary on Martha Stewart pulls back the curtain on one of America’s greatest self-made icons, from her start as a teenage model, her stint as a Wall Street stockbroker, and her eventual reign as the grand dame of entertaining and good taste. Directed by R.J. Cutler, Martha draws on hundreds of hours of intimate interviews with Stewart and those from her inner circle, along with Stewart’s private archives of diaries, letters, and never-seen-before footage. The film illuminates Stewart’s upbringing in a working-class family, compels us to reconsider the scandal that sent her to prison, and heralds her post-prison reinvention as the original influencer who’s still captivating new generations of fans.
“People don’t quite understand just how much of a visionary Martha was and continues to be. She understood synergy long before others did; she understood the lack or barriers between different kinds of content before others did; she understood the power of the personal brand before others did,” Cutler adds. “She made the world a more beautiful place, and she gave us greater access to beauty. She democratized fashion, taste, and style. She saw the future before others saw it and she always had to overcome enormous obstacles that were in her way. Most of the people who put those obstacles in her way were men who refused to see what she was able to see and who made it harder for others to see because she was a woman. And she overcame those obstacles with extraordinary success.”
Martha is now streaming on Netflix.
While Stewart is the only interview subject featured on camera in the documentary, she’s not the only one speaking to her story. The voices of many of the most significant people from all different stages of her life add insight and context to the narrative, offering a nuanced portrait of the woman at the center of it all: Stewart herself.
“The plan was to create a company that was omni media in scope. It was my idea to make the plan of the company the solar system [with] one person at the center,” Stewart says in the film. “It hadn’t been done like that before.” Building her empire didn’t come easy, however, with various investors and bankers balking at the idea of a billion-dollar company run by a woman.
But Stewart is nothing if not underestimated — and she loves to prove her critics wrong. To understand the massive success of Stewart’s decade-spanning, culture-shifting career, take a look below.
Stewart shares a daughter, Alexis Stewart, with her first and only husband, Andy Stewart. The pair wed in 1961 and were together for over 20 years before separating in 1987 and then finalizing their divorce in 1990.
Martha traces the trajectory of their marriage alongside Stewart’s ascent to cultural ubiquity — from the earliest days of their college romance to their friction-filled final moments as a couple. “He was not satisfied at home,” Stewart says in the film. “I don’t know how many girlfriends he had during this time, but I think there were quite a few.”
While Stewart admits to having a “very brief affair with a very attractive Irishman” during their marriage, she recalls Andy pushing for the divorce following his much-publicized relationship with her ex-assistant, Robyn Fairclough, whom he went on to marry. “Young women, listen to my advice,” Stewart says. “If you’re married and your husband starts to cheat on you, he’s a piece of shit. Get out of the marriage.”
The tumult in Stewart’s personal life, however, only fueled her desire to build a life and business all her own. “After Andy [Stewart] left, I really lost myself in work, the ideas for the future, and luckily I had them,” she says. “I could have just been a miserable has-been housewife, but I didn’t let that happen to myself, and I’m so happy I didn’t.”
